SEO is the reason you are reading this blog and you are most likely to be an SEO professional or a business owner wanting to learn more about SEO and how that work. Assuming that you have a basic idea of what SEO is, we will keep this blog direct about how to optimize your website for SEO.
How to Optimize Your Website for SEO Purposes?
Optimize Your URLs:
URLs are highly underrated when it comes to optimizing your website for SEO. Google and people will be reading the URL of your website first and it indicates what your website is all about. Having targeted keywords in your website URL is one of the best ways to tell Google about your niche and industry.
Keep your URLs Readable:
To make your website’s URL readable enough, make sure to use simple English that can be understood by laymen. Make it easy to skim so that people don’t have to make too much effort to understand the meaning of your website address and make the decision accordingly. Keep your URLs short and sweet and concise.
Some CMS like WordPress provide URLs with numerical characteristics as the default layout but fortunately, you can change that by visiting the “settings” section. Opt for permalinks options and it will make your URLs filled with words characteristics instead of numerical characteristics.
Categories and Site Structure:
One of the major factors that impact your website’s ranking is existing website categories and site structure. Naming the categories and sub-categories of your website helps individuals as well as the whole website to rank for targeted keywords and phrases.
Does Underscore or Hyphen Matter?
There is a lot of debate going on about whether you should add an underscore or hyphen in your website URL but the fact remains that it doesn’t matter as long as your URL is readable enough to search engines and human beings.
However, if you have an existing underscore or hyphen placed in your URLs, there is no meaning to change it. You should have either one while you are creating your URLs to get the maximum results. If you change your URLs later, you have to redirect them and it will do more harm than good.
Optimize Your Page Titles:
Page titles are another SEO-ranking factor that is highly underrated. You have to strike the balance between the best readability score, SEO keywords, and description length. If you want to see how your page title looks, use the “info” command in Google while searching for the page; and enter the page URL to see how your page title looks in the search engine result pages.
The ideal length of the page title is 69 characters or 512 pixels. If you are a developer, you can get a rough idea of how 512 pixels will take space, but if you are not it’s better to stick to a maximum of 69 characters.
Don’t forget to add targeted keywords to your page titles. Make your page titles interesting by asking an interesting question, adding facts and stats, or shocking statements that urge them to click on your link and read further. Make sure your audience gets enough value in the title itself to take further action.
Optimizing Your Page Descriptions:
A better page description is the secret sauce to having better CTR (Click-through-ratio). And having a better CTR improves your chances of being ranked at the top for targeted keywords. Though CTR is not the only and main reason for having traffic on your website, it has a major influence on how much traffic your page is getting. Page descriptions have a description length of 156 characters.
Include features, advantages, and benefits of the product in your product description to have the maximum clicks on your link – don’t forget to add an exciting CTA (call to action).
Utilising Content Marketing:
One of the best ways to optimize your website is by leveraging the power of content marketing. Creating content is a great way to use keywords and provide value to your target audience while making search engines happy.
Write your content in a way where keywords can be set naturally and you don’t have to fit them forcefully. Google has changed its way of identifying the relationship between good content and keywords included. So it is always better to focus on providing the best content and not to worry much about including keywords.
Optimizing Images:
Images are another factor that you need to consider while optimizing your website for SEO. Make your image file name descriptive and unique along with the title and alt tag. Alt tags for images will allow screen readers to get an idea about your image and add relevant keywords to your image description.
Page Speed:
Page speed matters a lot as people don’t like to wait too long to load the page. If your website is taking more than 2 to 3 seconds to load, your audience is more likely to leave the website before they can see your content. In this way, you lose an opportunity to provide value and ask them to consider you for the solution they are looking for.
Make sure your website is loading as fast as possible for the best user experience and get more audience on your site.
Outbound Links:
One thing that you need to keep in mind while getting your website outbound links is that it’s not just the links you are getting to your site but also the source you are getting it from. If you are getting links from poor-quality websites, you are harming the rankings of your own website. Focus on getting quality links instead of quantity links.
Ad Placement:
If you are allowing Google to show ads on your website for monetization purposes, make sure your ads are not affecting the reader and user experience of your audience. Having ads spread across your website makes it hard for your audience to read the content – indicating a negative SEO factor.
Poor website performance and user experience also lead to decreased ad revenues from Google. Remember, people and Google both prioritize content first and Ads second.
Take Away:
These were the key tips on how to optimize your website. Focus on all the factors mentioned above in the blog to optimize your website for SEO purposes. If you are looking for professional help to get website optimization for your business, feel free to drop us an email at [email protected] or contact us to take the conversation further as soon as possible.