Billions of people browse search engines every single day looking for all kinds of information. Oftentimes, less than 5% of this group navigate past the first pages of search engine results pages (SERPs). That’s why it’s important to know how Google SEO works to help you earn the first page rankings.
No matter how great your website looks, you won’t be able to get leads or sales if it’s not generating traffic because it’s not visible on Google. Here’s how you can design and develop an SEO-friendly website that ultimately ranks well:
Do Keyword Research
Every online search begins with a few words (often referred to as keywords) being typed into the search box. Therefore, the keywords you want your site to rank for need to appear in your content. Note that search engines take into account how keywords are used; as such, avoid keywords stuffing, irrelevant keywords, and try using them in a natural way to avoid confusing readers. Ultimately, keyword research isn’t just about generating more traffic, but also attracting the right kind of visitors.
Optimise Meta Tags
Meta tags is another SEO terminology which is the information provided within the head of each page to describe its content. Meta tags give a summarised version of the content on your pages. Optimising the three most essential tags (the title tag, the Meta description, and Meta robot) will attract more clicks to your site and improve website ranking on Google.
Start by adding compelling, relevant, and keyword-rich Meta tags with the correct length to every article and page on your site. More importantly, ensure the tags accurately portray what a searcher will find when they browse through your site.
Make Sure Your SEO Website Design Is Responsive Across All Devices
Virtually everyone owns a smartphone nowadays. It, therefore, goes without saying that the majority of internet users browse from their phones than from a computer. Plus, many will appreciate being able to access a website on the go. In an attempt to make the web more mobile-friendly, Google has implemented mobile-first indexing, which means they’ll factor in the mobile version of your site when building its index.
In addition, for all those valuable searches done on mobile phones, search engines will display mobile-friendly results first. You can make your site mobile-friendly by using a responsive design. With responsive web design, your pages have just one URL. This centralises the SEO power you gain from both mobile and desktop searches, helping Google recognise your posts’ value and rank them accordingly.
Improve Your Page Speed
Website speed has become another critical SEO ranking factor. People like fast sites, and so does Google. They have previously cited that an e-commerce website should load within 2 seconds. On top of getting higher rankings, making your pages quick to load also improves user experience, which in turn increases Click-through rate (CTR) and prevents visitors from leaving. So, how can you increase speed and optimise loading times?
- Choose a high-speed hosting provider
- Use a content distribution network
- Optimise images
- Leverage browser caching
- Reduce redirects
- Enable compression, and so on.
Write High-Quality Content
Quality content is probably the most important factor to consider on this list. After all, people perform online searches to get useful information. Search engines reward websites with high-quality, relevant content. Therefore, ensure your content is appealing and informational.
To make your content SEO friendly, avoid duplicate content, thin content, content farming, poor content that’s tied to affiliate links, high ad-to-content ratios, improper use of language and punctuation, complex technical jargon, and so on.
The benefits of building an SEO-friendly website are undeniable. Understanding how to do SEO for your website will definitely increase your presence on search engines. Use this text as a guide to make some adjustments on your website and improve its ranking potential.
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