If you want your website to (A) show up on search engines and (B) rank well on search engines, then search engine optimization (SEO) is a must. SEO can be an afterthought for many website owners, but it shouldn’t be, especially when you can improve your website’s SEO by taking a few simple considerations during the website design process.
Get started by following these four tips.
1. Purchase SSL certificate
Having an SSL certificate on your site has been a key ranking factor from Google for several years now. The search engine giant has made it plain that a site with an SSL certificate will always rank more favorably than one without. It’s not hard to see why. SSL certificates encrypt the connection between your site and anyone visiting, keeping any data sent over it safe and secure. So you’re not only improving SEO but also keeping your users safe.
2. Create valuable content with relevant keywords
Compelling content is one of the most critical elements of SEO. This means creating content that is not only well-written and researched, but valuable to your users. You need to anticipate what readers in your niche would find interesting and genuinely helpful. Elevate it a step further by doing keyword research and including them (sparingly) throughout your article.
3. Think about layout
Having a confusing website is not only bad for users, but it’s also bad for SEO. Make sure your website makes sense and that visitors can intuitively find the information they’re looking for. Research website architecture so that your website has a logical hierarchy. And make sure all the pages are properly linked to each other. This will ensure that search engine spiders (bots that find web pages to index) will be able to find them.
4. Get technical
SEO is more than just keyword research. There are also many things you can do in the backend of your site to impress search engines. One key element is creating robots.txt and an XML sitemap. Robots.txt is a file you can add to your site to explain to bots where they should and shouldn’t go on your site. Similarly, a sitemap can provide even more information about the pages on your site and can be added to the robots.txt file. There are many tutorials online about how to do this. Other technical SEO considerations include using schema markup, optimizing your website’s speed, and making sure your website is mobile-friendly.
The takeaway
SEO is essential if you want people to find your website organically. The great thing about it, you can go as in-depth or straightforward as you like, and you’re still likely to see an improvement in your search engine rankings. Start with the tips in this article and build your SEO plan from there.