Published: February 23, 2025
Last Updated: September 3, 2026

Google is one of the most widely used search engines in the world, making search visibility an important part of building a successful website. If potential customers cannot find your website when searching for relevant products, services or information, you may miss valuable opportunities.

This is where SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) comes in. SEO involves improving your website so that search engines can better crawl, understand and index its content while also providing a useful experience for visitors. For Google’s own recommendations, see the Google Search Central SEO Starter Guide.

If you are new to SEO, our guide to Top SEO Tips for Beginners can also help you understand the fundamentals. Here are three important areas to focus on when improving your website’s SEO.

This Article Belongs to SEO

1. Improve the Speed and Performance of Your Website

Website speed has a direct impact on user experience. Visitors generally expect pages to load quickly, particularly when browsing from mobile devices. If a page takes too long to become usable, visitors may leave before reading your content, viewing your products or completing an enquiry.

Google considers page experience as part of its overall search systems, although it is important to understand that good page experience alone does not guarantee high rankings. Google recommends looking at several aspects, including Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, HTTPS security and whether the page is easy for visitors to use.

Core Web Vitals provide useful measurements of real-world user experience. They currently include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures loading performance; Interaction to Next Paint (INP), which measures responsiveness; and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which measures visual stability. Google recommends aiming for an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less, an INP below 200 milliseconds and a CLS below 0.1 for a good user experience.

Several common issues can make a website unnecessarily slow:

Common issue Potential impact
Poor-quality or insufficient hosting Slow server response and unreliable performance
Too many plugins Additional scripts and processing can increase page weight
Unoptimised WordPress themes Unnecessary code can affect loading performance
Large images Pages require more data to load
Excessive third-party scripts Analytics, advertising and other scripts can affect performance

Website owners can use tools such as Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights to identify performance problems. Rather than focusing only on achieving a perfect score, concentrate on improving the actual experience for visitors.

For businesses that want to understand why SEO deserves greater attention, see You Need to Focus More on SEO.

2. Create High-Quality Content Regularly

Content remains one of the most important parts of a successful SEO strategy. A technically excellent website will struggle to attract the right audience if its pages do not answer users’ questions or provide useful information.

Good content should be clear, relevant, accurate and written for people first. Google specifically advises creators to produce helpful, reliable, people-first content rather than content designed primarily to manipulate search rankings.

This means you should not create articles simply because a particular keyword has search volume. Instead, consider what your target audience actually wants to know. Identify the questions they ask, the problems they are trying to solve and the information they need before making a purchase or contacting your business.

For example, an online business selling accounting software could create useful content explaining how to choose accounting software, how to organise financial records or what features small businesses should look for. Such content can attract relevant visitors while establishing the website as a useful information source.

Regular publishing can also help keep a website useful, but publishing frequently is not a ranking requirement by itself. Google states that there is no preferred word count and warns against producing large amounts of content simply in the hope that some of it will perform well in Search.

Instead of publishing as much as possible, focus on creating content that adds genuine value. Update older articles when information has changed, remove outdated claims and improve pages when you identify gaps.

Internal linking is another useful part of content optimisation. Relevant internal links help visitors discover related information and can help search engines understand the relationship between pages.

3. Optimise Your Images

Images can make a website more attractive and easier to understand, but poorly optimised images can also increase page weight and affect performance.

One common mistake is uploading very large images when a much smaller version would be sufficient for the page. For example, an image several thousand pixels wide may not need to be displayed at its original dimensions if it only appears in a smaller content area.

Before uploading an image, resize it to dimensions appropriate for its intended display area. You should also choose an efficient file format and compress the image while maintaining acceptable visual quality.

Image optimisation involves more than reducing file size. Google recommends making images discoverable and ensuring that their surrounding page provides useful context. Descriptive filenames and appropriate alternative text can also help search engines understand images.

Avoid using unnecessarily heavy images, particularly above-the-fold images that can affect initial loading performance. Where appropriate, modern image formats and responsive image techniques can help browsers deliver more suitable files to different devices.

You should also think carefully about accessibility. Alt text should describe the meaningful content or purpose of an image rather than being filled with keywords. If an image is purely decorative, it may not need descriptive alt text.

Other SEO Factors Worth Considering

Although page speed, content and images are important, SEO is much broader than these three areas. A successful strategy should also consider technical accessibility, internal linking, mobile usability, website security, search intent, metadata and site structure.

Google’s SEO Starter Guide explains that SEO helps search engines understand your content and helps users decide whether your website is relevant to their search.

It is also useful to monitor your website instead of making changes blindly. Google Search Console can provide information about search performance and help identify indexing or technical issues.

If your website has significant technical problems or you do not have the resources to manage SEO yourself, professional support may be worth considering. You can learn more about the potential benefits in Index and Traffic: 3 Major Advantages of Working With an SEO Company.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does website speed affect SEO?

Website performance contributes to page experience, and Core Web Vitals are used by Google’s ranking systems. However, speed is only one part of SEO, and improving performance does not automatically guarantee higher rankings.

How often should I publish new content?

There is no fixed publishing frequency that guarantees better rankings. Focus on producing useful, original content for your audience rather than publishing simply to meet a particular word count or schedule.

How can I optimise images for SEO?

Resize images appropriately, compress them, use suitable file formats, provide descriptive alt text where appropriate and make sure the image supports the surrounding page content.

Is SEO only about ranking first on Google?

No. SEO is about helping search engines understand your website and helping relevant users find useful content. Google itself notes that there are no secrets that automatically make a website rank first.

Conclusion

Improving your website’s SEO requires more than adding keywords to pages. Start by providing a fast and usable website, create genuinely helpful content and optimize images so they do not unnecessarily affect performance. Then build on these foundations with sound technical SEO, useful internal links and regular performance monitoring.

Most importantly, focus on your visitors rather than trying to find shortcuts to Google’s first position. A website that consistently provides relevant information and a good overall experience has a stronger foundation for long-term search visibility.