Why is Google not sending more traffic?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important aspect of any new website design. It’s critical for a web designer or blogger to understand the fundamentals of SEO. You may create a beautiful website, but if no one visits it in a few months, your customer will be disappointed with the final results. Here are some simple SEO guidelines that you should follow to improve the SEO on all of your future web designs.
The homepage is the most important page
The homepage is the most important element of your website’s visibility in search engines. It should summarize the rest of the site and provide a clear, compelling reason for a person to check out other interior pages on your website. Use more general keyword tags and funnel them to your interior web pages with more precise / targeted keywords that offer particular items or services.
Backlinks to your website and onsite links
Backlinks from other sites to your site, as well as the anchor text used in those links, are important to search engines. For a link, don’t use “click here” or “view more.” The term should explain where the user will go after clicking the link, such as “view our SEO services” or “see all digital marketing solutions.” Avoid going overboard and using the same anchor text too many times.
Focus on a few keywords initially
Choose a handful of keywords or long tail keyword phrases that describe your website. Whenever it’s appropriate, utilize them and words connected to them. It’s not a good idea to adhere to the rule of repeating oneself too often. Use them in sentences, headlines, and site links.
Yep, that one again: “Content is King“
Visitors to your website are looking for information, not design. No one will pay attention to your website if it doesn’t have useful material that people are searching for.
Clean Code is Searchable Code
Use a text editor while developing your websites so you can type clean, readable HTML and use spell checker. The HTML source should follow the page’s logical structure, starting with the H1 tag and proceeding to the first paragraph under H2, etc. When feasible, utilize tags that are descriptive. List types are indicated by “ul,” paragraphs by “p,” heads and subheads by “H,” and bolded text by “strong.”
Title tags rule!
Each page on your site should have a title, a brief description of the page with keywords in it, and a long description. For most search engines, this will take up 60 letters or more. It should provide visitors with an obvious incentive to click on it. Furthermore, at the top of each page, you should lead with a relevant H1 tag utilizing one of your keywords and the first line of text should be a summary of the rest of the content.
Navigation links should have title attributes that match the titles of your pages. It may seem like a small thing, but incorporating this change can provide a significant SEO boost.
Alt tags matter
It’s important to use the alt tag on every image on your site, particularly those that are relevant to the page. If your blog is about coding methods, tagging a screenshot “example of coding html” will improve its visibility. Labeling it “photo,” “image,” or any other broad term will have the opposite effect.
You can choose to ignore some meta tags
The description tag, which appears in search results, is the only meta tag that matters anymore. It may be used by search engines to provide text beneath your link’s headline in their results. Make certain it contains information that will entice visitors searching for your material to visit your page rather than other sites listed. It should compel people to click on the link and go to your site rather than others that are similar.
Have a Sitemap.xml File
Make sure you have a site map. An xml file that describes the structure of your site’s pages and makes it easier for web crawlers to scan it. After you create one, add it to both Google Webmaster Central and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Summary
If you’ve made it this far in the post, we hope that you found at least one tip for improving your website or digital marketing strategy. Remember to check out our SEO audit checklist post for additional things you should look out for when reviewing your website or starting a new web design project. And remember, with search engine optimization, “Slow and Steady Wins the Race”. Get in touch if any of these tips resonated with you and want us to provide a quote on how we could improve your site’s rankings through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
About the Author: Brad Fogel
