SEO Tips That Will Improve Your Web Design and Website ranking: Online presence is very important as nowadays maximum people search online. Maximum lead conversion from a website should be the first goal of every website owner. One of the largest traffic sources till date for any website is organic search. Maintaining your website to achieve top rank in search results is the way to go. For this, SEO is very important. But many website owners did not realise that SEO is an integral part of the entire website design process and only consider it as an afterthought.
Search Engine Optimization(SEO) if done well for different search engines (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo), can improve a website’s visibility in SERPs (search engine result pages).
Note: Nowadays website URL addresses, title tags and meta-descriptions, optimizing website images and so on becomes less important because Google focuses on other SEO factors (mostly on content and link building techniques). However, as we’re learning about the SEO basics, the only way we should do it is to learn about good practices.
SEO and web design go hand-in-hand. Here’s a comprehensive list on the SEO aspects to consider while designing a website.
Choose a Unique & Sensible Domain
One of the ranking factors that search engines look at in order to figure out what a page is about is Domain name. Always choose a domain name that is relevant, easy to remember, and incorporates the main keyword you want to rank for, that’s ideal.
Remember that domain represents your brand identity and is something potential leads and visitors will refer to in the future. Ensure that it is unique but makes sense and reflects your business motive at the same time.
Also, there are instances when multiple variants of a domain exist. Make sure all the variants point to the main canonical version of the site.
Go for a trustable and Reputable Web Hosting Provider.
Website speed is the most important ranking factor that google has been upfront too. If your webpage loads for longer then the Visitors become impatient and may leave your website. Visitors expect webpages to load within seconds (or less), So Google tries to only deliver results that will satisfy that requirement.
While you have a number of strategies you can try to make your website fast over time, one of the best steps to take from day one is choosing a web hosting provider that can deliver consistent speeds. Resellerclub is a great example, as it provides a platform tailored to WordPress websites.
Use hyphens (-) instead of underscores (_) in URLs.
Using underscores to separate words in a URL name is not good, as Google will read it as one single word. For example the_best_seo_practices will be treated by search crawlers as ‘the best seo practices’. That one is very hard to read. So always use hyphens in url instead of underscores for best SEO practice.
Choose a static URL address instead of a dynamic one.
There are two types of web addresses: static and dynamic.
A static URL looks like that: your-domain-name.com/category/the-best-seo-practices
A dynamic one can look like this: your-domain-name.com/category/?p=028705
While search engines can easily understand both of the URLs, for human beings dynamic URLs are completely illegible.
For instance, if you have a blog on WordPress you can see that a default URL address of a particular post is dynamic.
When you click the ‘publish’ button, WordPress will automatically convert it into a static address. However, it will pick random keywords from the blog’s title. In terms of SEO, it would be better if you edit the URL name yourself which is possible as seen above.
Keep a URL address brief, descriptive and relevant.
Always keep website url brief, descriptive and relevant so that visitors should be able to tell at a glance what a particular website is all about. If you choose to edit a URL address yourself, you’ll not only work in favor of the keyword optimization, but you’ll also make it easier for a user to understand what he or she can find on a particular website. This way you’ll make a searcher’s life a bit easier and also good for your website ranking.
Seo Friendly Content
Always first plan your website content before writing it.. The content of your site should reflect your subject matter and be easy to understand – both for visitors and search engine bots. Highlight the main content (product or service) on the main category page (closer to homepage) followed by individual sub-category pages for every sub-point. Focus on a singular topic for every web page. Use keywords related to your business in content which makes it SEO friendly.
Mobile-Friendly Design
Make sure your website is mobile friendly as 90% of the users use mobiles to surf a website. This is a mobile-first age and the site owners who still don’t have a responsive site should consider converting. Mobile friendliness is a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm and covers both designing and coding aspects.
A user behaves differently when browsing a site on a smartphone, so keep in mind their needs and wants when designing the site in order to maximize results.
Image SEO
Usually not considered important but image optimization is very important which can drive significant traffic to your website. While creating a website this should be a priority task. Large images slow down the speed of a website. The optimum image size to be used is between 30 to 100 kb. Also, other parameters to be considered include image name (use a clear name that describes the image) and alt text (use descriptive text filled with the right keyword).
Use keywords relevant to you
SEO is pretty much based on keywords. The key to a good SEO strategy is to find out what words users type into a search bar when they look for websites like yours. With a list of relevant keywords in your hand, you’ll be halfway there.
The most common way of doing a keyword research is to use Google Keyword Planner. This free tool is available to anyone with a Google AdWords account, which is also free. Once you setup your account and give more details about your website, you’ll get a list of keyword suggestions.
Submit Your Sitemap to Google.
Before your web pages can show up on the search engine results page, Google has to crawl your website.
Usually Google’s crawlers will make their way to your website over time even if you don’t do anything, but you can speed things up by submitting your sitemap through Google Search Console. You can directly communicate to Google that your website exists and tell them all the specific pages on it.
Start on your plan for long-term SEO sooner rather than later. Consider if you can learn the ropes and do the work on your own, or if you need SEO optimization services to help.