Billions of people use search engines every day, but only less than 5% of them navigate past the first page of Google. Invest in your SEO strategy to design and develop an SEO-friendly website that Google will love.
No matter what industry you are in, your business is an Internet business, and your web page is your online image. People first search for products and services they need on the web.
SEO web design is a way of designing and developing websites to make them search-engine friendly. This means that Google and other search engines can shuffle each page on the website efficiently, analyze the content effectively, and index them in their database.
Only when they are indexed will search engines present the relevant websites to their users based on their search. The better the SEO strategies, the better the chance of ranking on the first page in search engine results.
7 tips to help you design an SEO-friendly website that ranks well on Google
Below we bring you the basic guidelines to help you improve your website and search engine optimization so your website can rank higher in Google.
1. Start with the marketing strategy
Creating a marketing strategy is more challenging than ever. A decade ago, simply launching your website on the Internet was enough to ensure you hit the high ranks. But, the Internet evolved, and with that, the fundamental rules of the Internet changed. However, the marketing strategy goals remain the same.
Your goals are to know your customer, develop an exceptional brand offer, and communicate with your audience effectively. The search engine will determine if you are found, but your content determines if a customer will be interested in working with you or purchasing your product.
A good website design alone is not a marketing strategy; you need to know your audience, who they are, and what type of content they like. The more you know now, the easier you will develop a buyer’s persona and create an effective marketing strategy.
Also, you need to know your expectations from the marketing campaign. Do you want more sales, more visibility, or to become a leader? Or maybe the combination of these.
Keep in mind that a considerable part of your marketing strategy is to create a brand value proposition. When your potential consumers come to your site, they will be intrigued to find out why you are the right company to do business with.
2. Keyword research
Keyword research is one of the most valuable activities in the search marketing industry because every online purchase begins with a few crucial words typed in the search engine.
Your website must be optimized for the targeted keywords to rank higher. But this isn’t just including words that will bring people to your website; the point is to get the right type of people to your website—those interested in purchasing your product or service.
The most valuable weapon to help you win the SEO keyword battle is Google AdWords Keyword Planner, an advertising system used by Google, which is free to use. You only have to create a list of 5 to 10 high-quality keywords and phrases related to your website, and you will get a generated report of the previous 12 months with graphs and search volumes.
After that, make a spreadsheet with the words that get the most attention and create your keyword list.
3. On-page SEO
On-page SEO is 50% of your strategy. This way, you optimize the structure of your page so the web crawlers can easily find the keywords you have targeted.
You can use a content management system like Google Webmaster to see if your site is being crawled. There are a few parts of your web page that must be optimized.
Those are:
- The body - You should include targeted keywords in the body of your content at least once if your post is short; for longer content gradually raise the amount of keywords but beware of keyword stuffing since Google will easily detect it and penalize your website. Words must fit in the text naturally, and make sure that your text is longer than 50 words.
- SEO toolkits - One of the essential qualities to look for in keywords is their relevance to your website. Make sure you look beyond the most obvious keywords that are related to your services or products so you can be sure you will stand out from the competition and allow your website to perform better overall. Performing keyword research is crucial to help you identify the phrases with the most search volume. For this task, you need a reliable SEO toolkit, and some of the most reliable are SemRush, SEOCrawler, Copyscape, Screaming Frog, and many more.
- Images - Always use keywords in the alt tag when you use images.
- Page title - It is vital to create a compelling page title that people want to click.
- Meta description - Meta description is what you see under the page title when you search for the targeted keywords.
- H1 title tag - This component must always include the crucial keywords for your blog post or page.
- URL structure - Do not forget to incorporate keywords in the URL slug and use appropriate anchor text for any external links.
Keep these components in mind every time you are creating new content for your web page.
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4. Off-page SEO
Off-page SEO is everything you can think of that you can do outside your website to improve your ranks. Off-page SEO is a must if you want to score an effective SEO plan.
Those are:
- Blogging - Writing an interesting blog is a crucial part of content marketing and a great way to make people come back to your site. This way, you will provide them with the information they need, and in turn, you will get to reach higher ranks.
- Social media sites - Creating an account on various social media platforms is a must. Make sure to sign up on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, and some niche-specific social media sites such as Twitch.
- Link building - This is the most important part of off-page SEO strategy. The main point is to build internal links as well as the external links on the other web pages similar to yours that will lead back to your website.
- Guest blog marketing - Communicate with your audience on the blogs within the same niche as yours. This way, you will get more followers and enhance brand awareness.
5. Local SEO and citations
Citations are mentions of your business name, business phone number, and address on another website, even if there is no link.
You need citations on well-established business listing web pages like Yelp, Bing, and more. Citations promote you and prove that your business is exactly as you claim it is, and that is located on the address you put in.
Also, citations are a part of your Local SEO since they help to validate that your business is a part of a local community. Try to receive citations on a newspaper website or some other local business website.
6. Reputation management
Nothing is more important than your online reputation, and you should not ignore this part. You need to make sure your customers can leave their feedback and reviews on your services and products so other potential customers can see why they should choose you over the competition.
A lot of consumers trust online reviews so keep this in mind, but don’t buy fake reviews and feedback, you need relevant and true feedback from your loyal customers that know the worth of your brand and products.
7. Website speed and hosting
Most people nowadays use mobile devices for Google search and social media, so making your web page optimized for mobile devices is crucial.
Your web page must look good on a mobile device, but more important is that it should load fast. If your site looks and performs well on mobile, your site will move up the rankings due to the good user experience. If you are serious about pushing more sales and ranking higher, I advise you to create a separate version of the web page just for mobile users.
