Most people, no matter the experience, have heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but many have no clue as to what it really means to optimize one’s website for better SERPs (Search Engine Results Position). It used to be a practice that was frowned upon by those who were ignorant of its purpose and techniques, but now, SEO is quickly becoming a technical art.
Find out what the search engine bots are looking for, and employ those techniques into the creation of a website. Simple, right? For those who do not agree, here are a few helpful insider tips to boost SEO performance for an up and coming website.
Sweet and Savvy blog entries
Every great website has an equally great blog presence. It is ill-advised that a webmaster floods their site with meaningless marketing ads and jumbled word vomit. Put some effort into creating informative and relatable blog posts, and people will notice.
Blog followers morph into loyal brand followers. If people believe in what the site is “selling,” then they are more likely to share it with their friends or recommend it to their family members. Take a look at this example of a blog that provides a wide array of useful information for web surfers.
Mobile friendly and speedy
It is a well-known fact that Google does consider loading and navigational speed of a website when ranking. Google has stated this fact publically, yet so many web designers refuse to optimize their web pages for speed.
Adding a mobile-friendly option to a website also helps with rankings. Mobile-friendly websites are specifically designed to be light for mobile access. A significant percentage of people around the world use their mobile devices to surf the web every single day. It behooves designers to implement mobile compatibility.
Metadata is crucial
The metadata of a website is basically “filling in the blanks” of a page’s design structure. When images are added, there should be an effort actually to fill in all of the extra information. Image credits matter. Image descriptions matter. Take the time to be thorough, and it will pay off in the search engine rankings.
Internal linking practices
External links are a whole different beast, and should also be handled with care. Internal links are the links placed within the coding of the website. The most useful manner in which to utilize internal linking practices is on the site’s blog. Here are a few simple rules to remember:
- Link related posts by using a keyword anchor or by using the full title of the blog post.
- Make sure that links make sense to people and search engine bots.
- The link needs to have a higher purpose than to work the bots. Make it useful for the readers.
- Avoid excess linking, and do not use anchors such as “click here.”
Originally posted on March 12, 2017 @ 10:32 pm