You're having a website, and all you need to do is to bring people on it. For your website to appear as one of the top results on search engines, you need to understand a little bit about the world of Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
So what is SEO and how to implement it? Whether you’re a small business owner or run a Fortune company, SEO has an enormous impact on the success of your business. With so many sites on the web today, there is no guarantee that your site will rank first on Search engine. Your SEO strategy determines how easily your target customers can find you.Keep reading to learn all about it.
How to improve your website’s SEO in 5 steps:
Choose the right URL
Before your website goes live, you need to give it a name. Also known as your domain name, this is the address that visitors will type in to find your site. The ideal domain will include your business name and perhaps a relevant keyword or two that are relevant to your business. The URL makes it possible for a computer to locate and open a web page on a different computer on the Internet.
The same is true when choosing the right URLs for all of your sites pages. Whether its a product page, or a blog page — make sure the URL you use reflects the content on the page, and the keyword or keywords you want this page to show up in search results for.
5 ways to choose a good domain name:
Length: When it comes to a domain name, less is more.
Simplicity.
Keywords: Relevant words help users find you in a search and recognize what you do at a glance.
Brand name.
Website name.
Create titles and descriptions for each page
These are brief texts that accurately and clearly describe what your business does. Ideally, they can come with a few keywords and phrases mixed in. That short phrase that pops up under your mouse is the title of the page. While the description is not visible on your page, it’s very important for search engines. In fact, the title and description are among the first elements search engines track to determine your site’s ranking.
The page title, often referred to as the 'title tag', 'meta title' or sometimes 'SEO title' is an HTML element in the head of a webpage that should succinctly describe the content and purpose of the page to users and search engines. Good descriptions are human-readable and diverse. Page-specific data is a good candidate for programmatic generation.
Keep in mind that meta descriptions comprised of long strings of keywords don't give users a clear idea of the page's content, and are less likely to be displayed in place of a regular snippet. Plus, once your site does show up in a search results page, web surfers will read your title and description to learn what your site is about and decide whether or not to check it out.
6 tips to write a good description:
Keep it up to 150 characters.
Use active voice and make it actionable.
Include a call-to-action.
Use your focus keyword.
Show specifications, where possible.
Make sure it matches the content of the page.
Utilize anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable text on a hyperlink that visitors can use to be taken directly to another web page, either within your site or anywhere on the internet. The blue, underlined anchor text is the most common as it is the web standard, although it is possible to change the color and underline through html code.
The simplest way to optimize anchor text for SEO is simply to make sure the anchor text uses descriptive keywords to accurately describe the page or idea you're linking to. But be careful! In SEO, it's easy to "over-optimize" your anchor text by over-relying on repetitive, keyword-rich phrases.
Add alt text to all your images
Fundamentally, the purpose of alt text is to improve accessibility by describing what an image is showing to visitors who do not have the ability to see them. However, it also helps search engine crawlers and so improves SEO.
To understand what’s displayed in a photo or graphic, search engines look for “alt text,” a concise written description (no longer than just a few words) about each image on a website. You don’t need to write alt text for images that are purely functional or design related, such as a background image that is just shapes. If the image doesn’t have anything to do with the topic of your site, you can skip the alt text.
Give your site structure with the right headers
Every page on your website should have a title, a subtitle and so on. When search engines scan your website, they’ll understand your content better if you are using the correct text hierarchy. Use an H1 heading for the page title or main content heading. Keep headings in order (H1,H2, etc). Keep headings accurate to the text they refer to. Avoid using headings for design elements.
3 ways to write a good heading and subheading:
Keep headings concise.
Use headings to enhance, not replace.
Do not overdo it.