Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the practice of optimising your website and its content to improve its visibility and ranking on search engine results pages. The goal of SEO is to increase organic (non-paid) traffic to your website by ensuring that it appears high in search engine rankings when internet users are searching for information.
Unlike paid advertising, SEO is completely free and available to all, dependent mainly upon the ease of navigation offered to your website users, the quality of the content published, the placement of keywords and phrases in the content to ensure that search engines can easily find your website on the internet, and the number of backlinks received from external sources.
Let’s have a more in-depth look at these ranking factors:
Ranking Factors
Registered domain name: The first step in creating an online presence is purchasing a domain name. Choosing a good domain name is crucial for boosting SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). This topic has been discussed in a previous blog: How to choose a good domain name.
Website Architecture and User Experience: Your WeaverWorx web designer ensures that your website is easy to navigate, with clear menus, intuitive design, and fast page loading times, always keeping in mind that a good user experience correlates with better search engine rankings.
Mobile-Friendliness: All websites created by WeaverWorx are mobile responsive, and look good on both desktop and mobile devices, as mobile-friendliness is a significant ranking factor.
Technical SEO: This involves optimising the technical aspects of your website, such as improving website speed, implementing schema markup, using HTTPS, and creating a sitemap when the website is designed. Note: Technical optimisation is very important in the design phase, but is also an ongoing concern that might affect your website’s performance, such as broken links, duplicate content, and slow loading times, which must be attended to on a regular basis for the rest of your website’s lifetime. Check out the maintenance services offered by WeaverWorx to keep your website running on oiled wheels.
Quality Content: Search engines give preference and higher ranking to websites with value-adding and relevant (current) content. Creating high-quality, original, and engaging content that provides value to your website, means that your designer must be provided with informative, well-researched, and engaging content that addresses the needs of your target audience. Give clear descriptions of products and services offered to avoid disputes and confusion.
You, as the business and website owner who knows your business best, are required to provide correct and pertinent information which the designer will present on the website pages in a structured manner easily interpreted by search engines. You should also closely monitor and update your content when necessary, to show search engines that your website is active and relevant. Outdated content will quickly strangle interest in the website.
Keywords and phrases: Using the content furnished by you, your designer can assist you in identifying those all-important keywords and phrases that people use to search for information related to your website’s content. Keywords and phrases should be relevant to your business and have a decent search volume. Your designer will incorporate the target keywords naturally within the content, title tags, meta descriptions, and headings, always striving to avoid overstuffing which may irritate the users (and the search engines).
XML Sitemap: Your designer will generate an Extensible Markup Language (XML) sitemap, which aids search engines in comprehending your website effectively. This sitemap encompasses a roster of your website’s pages and diverse content types, along with their interconnections. It also highlights the significance of specific pages to search engines and furnishes pertinent details about them. Despite this file being automatically available to all search engines, your Weaverworx web designer proactively submits the sitemap to prominent ones like Google and Bing for quicker indexing.
On-Page Optimisation
On-page optimisation forms part of the designer’s creative functions, with input and cooperation from the client during the design phase, and includes optimising various elements on your website’s pages, such as:
Title Tags: Craft informative and relevant title tags for each page. Title tags are a confirmed ranking factor. Search engines use your title tag to get an idea of what is on your page and how relevant your content is to the user’s search query. Title tags also tell browsers how to display your page’s title in three key places: search results, browser tabs, and social media.
Example: In the example below the title tag is marked in green.
Meta Descriptions: Create compelling meta descriptions that summarise the content and encourage visits by internet users. A meta description is a webpage summary that reflects in search engine results. Meta descriptions should let users know what they’ll find on the page and encourage them to click through to open the web page.
Example: In the example below the meta description is marked in green.
Headings and sub-headings: Use proper heading tags to structure the content in such a way that search engines and internet users can easily scan and interpret the page content. Headings highlight the main points within the content and guide users through the flow of the page.
Internal and External Links:
- Internal links: Your designer will ensure proper interlinking of your website’s pages and content.
- External links: You can obtain quality external links (backlinks) from other reputable websites to boost your SEO. Search engines view the quality and quantity of the links as authoritativeness and votes of confidence from other websites – avoid low-quality and spammy links. Seek opportunities to acquire quality backlinks from authoritative websites in your industry, e.g., your sponsors, if your business is a club or a charity, suppliers of goods sold by you, authorities in your industry who support your business culture and values, etc. Note: Remember that permission must be obtained from sponsors and suppliers to use their links and logos on your website. Your designer will assist with creating the links on your website.
Clean URLs:
The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a reference or address commonly used to access webpages, images, videos, files, and other types of online content.
A “Clean URL” is a URL that is designed to be user-friendly and human-readable. Clean URLs typically reflect the structure of the content or the hierarchy of the website, e.g. by including category and product ID or name of service provided, in a readable format. This provides internet users and search engines with information about the content of the page directly from the URL itself.
Example URL: https://example/product/category/productname/
The benefits of Clean URLs are the following:
- Positive user experience: Clean URLs are easier for humans to understand and remember. They convey meaningful information about the content of the page or resource;
- Shareability: Clean URLs are more attractive when shared on social media, in e-mails, or in printed materials. They look cleaner and more professional; and
- Enhanced SEO: Search engines often prefer clean URLs as they are more likely to contain relevant keywords and phrases. This can improve a web page’s ranking in search results.
Your WeaverWorx web designer will ensure that all URLs emanating from your website are “clean”, user-friendly and SEO optimised.
Images should contain alt text: Images on your website that contain alt text are indexed by search engines to better understand the content of the page, and the text is read aloud by screen readers to visually impaired users. For SEO purposes alt text helps search engines to understand and index the contents of your images.
Your Weaverworx designer can instruct you on how to add alt text to your images.
Summary
The aforementioned is an overview of the SEO strategies applied to all websites created by WeaverWorx during the design phase. Remember that SEO is a long-term strategy and results may take time to show. It is also a dynamic field that evolves with search engine algorithms, so staying informed about the latest trends and best practices is crucial. If you’re unfamiliar with SEO or unhappy with your website’s performance you might consider consulting with professionals who offer paid advice and SEO services. Also remember that there are other ways to promote your website’s ranking, e.g., free marketing via social media and content sharing.
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