Did you know that organic search is the largest digital channel and the dominant source of trackable web traffic, with an astounding share of 53%? In fact, when done right, search engine optimization (SEO) can help drive purchase-ready traffic to the website by up to a 14.6% conversion rate.
These numbers should give you an idea of why more and more business owners and marketers are leaning toward building an SEO-friendly website.
Even though SEO is an inevitable requirement, creating an SEO-friendly website isn’t an easy task. Ample knowledge in white label SEO and perhaps guidance from an SEO outsourcing company is imperative to build a website that search engines appreciate.
In this blog, we will uncover various tips and tricks on how to build an SEO-friendly website. But first, let’s comprehend –
1- What is an SEO-friendly website?
An SEO-friendly website is a website that is –
- Technically sound
- Pleasant to use
- And search-engine focused
A website that has all of these three elements tends to rank at the top of search engines, given it resonates well with both the search engines and the targeted users.
2- How to build an SEO-friendly website that is technically sound?
This segment of the checklist needs to be set up once but revisited whenever new changes are introduced.
First, you need to focus on making the website crawlable and indexable by the search engines by focusing on technical SEO strategies such as –
2.1- Plan an effective website structure
Planning a website structure is never easy. This is especially true if you dream of having something more than just a portfolio on the website.
From an SEO perspective, these are a few things that really matter –
- Site structure’s depth – Ensure that important pages aren’t too far away from the homepage. Keeping them a few clicks away (mostly two or three clicks but not more than six clicks) is best. This is because the chances of overly nestled webpages getting crawled are less often.
- Keyword optimization of category pages – It is possible to rank category pages on search engines, too. For that, you need to optimize keywords with excellent search demand for these pages.
- Internal links – Internal links can let the search engines know which page needs to be crawled more often. Even the link in site navigation is counted as internal links. By properly structuring and linking these links in the site navigation, you can boost your SEO significantly.
2.2- Set up GSC
Google Search Console is an important tool, without which it is impossible to do SEO confidently. With Google’s market share of a whopping 92.07%, this free tool makes tracking the site’s organic search performance easy and efficient.
Setting a Google Search Console is imperative for producing SEO friendly website because it enables you to –
- Find opportunities to improve the UX
- Submit sitemaps easily
- Find the errors across the website
Plus, GSC makes it possible to check keywords that a particular business gets ranked for and the ranking options.
2.3- Create and submit a sitemap
A sitemap is a document that describes the search engines where to find crucial content on your website and is stored on your server. A sitemap can also provide details about certain content, such as the publication date of a post, the video’s running time and so on. All these data are used by search engines to crawl your website seamlessly.
Even though search engines like Google are designed to function based on internal links and backlinks and not the sitemap, you can create and submit a sitemap if your website is significant with over 500 pages, has isolated pages and few to no backlinks. A reliable web design company can help produce an effective sitemap.
2.4- Make the website indexable
The term indexability defines search engines’ ability to assess and store a webpage in its database.
Sometimes, even if a page is capable of being accessible by the search engine web crawlers, it won’t show up on SERPs.
The reason behind this can be –
- The “Noindex” value is present in the robot.txt file.
- “None” or “Noindex” value present in the x-robots-tag
Make sure that these values aren’t present in the pages that you want to rank on SERPs. However, ensure to maintain them in an internal search result or thank you page.
2.5- Make the site accessible in one domain
Choosing a canonical domain name is important to make the site appear consistent to both the users and web crawlers. The canonical domain name also prevents problems like diluted link equity – when some websites link themselves to HTTP while others link themselves to the HTTP version.
3- How to make an SEO-friendly website pleasant to use?
Points mentioned in this checklist may be required to be set up only once.
Search engines like Google value websites that boost customer engagement and satisfaction more than websites that don’t. Hence focusing on aspects that directly impact the user experience is extremely important.
Here are some tips –
3.1- Focus on mobile-friendly elements
Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it indexes and ranks the websites based on how they appear on mobile devices. This is one of the cases why optimizing your website for mobile devices is extremely important.
You can use a variety of test tools to determine whether or not a website is mobile-friendly from search engines like Google’s perspective.
3.2- Ensure the site loads promptly
Did you know 47% of consumers expect a website to load within 2 seconds or less? Similarly, 53% of online visitors tend to leave a website if it takes any longer than 3 seconds to completely load.
With such an expectation from online visitors, we don’t think overlooking the site’s speed is at all a choice for businesses that wish to attract more visitors. Hence focusing on improving the loading speed of the site is crucial.
You might think that your website features the most relevant content, meaning there is no worry about your website not being in the good books of search engines. Well, you are highly mistaken here.
Why would search engines prefer a website that takes longer to load when it can show a website that has the perfect balance of relevant content and good loading speed?
3.3- Prefer HTTPS and not HTTP
Besides providing relevant content in little time, Google also wants to provide secure pages to the users. Hence, pages with HTTP are preferred by search engines.
HTTP or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure is just a secure version of HTTP.
To make a website secure, all you need to do is get an SSL certificate and incorporate it into your website. Many web design services comprise hosting services, too; seek those or obtain one for free here.
4- How to build an SEO-friendly website that is search engine-focused?
The checklist mentioned here may be required to set up for every new content that you wish a website/webpage to get ranked for.
Now, it is time to make the website abide by the rules and regulations set by the search engines, thereby making it eligible for the SERPs.
4.1- Implement the right keywords
The most straightforward way of driving more traffic to a website is by creating content that online visitors might be searching for. And the optimal way to do this is by optimizing the written digital content with relevant keywords.
But what makes a keyword relevant and good?
- Search intent – Online visitors use search engines to buy, learn or find something specific. Choose a keyword and implement it into content that matches what the online visitors might want to see in the search results.
- Business potential – A keyword might bring you traffic, but can it bring you new businesses? It is important to prioritize the topics based on the relevancy of what you offer so you can feature your services, products, etc., in the same.
- Search traffic potential – A keyword’s ability to generate more traffic depends on how often and how much it is being used by online visitors to do the search. Hence, it is important to check how potentially sound your keywords are before using them.
- Easy to rank – There are various tools website design companies use to determine a keyword’s ability to be ranked.
4.2- Make the content useful and interesting
Google has stated various times that the content itself is the single strongest ranking factor. Hence, many web design companies focus on the content the most.
The content’s ability to offer useful and interesting details is what makes it excellent in the eyes of search engines.
You can utilize the following tips to make your online content both useful and interesting for users and in the eyes of search engines –
- Clearly organize the content
- Create original, fresh and unique content
- Keep the content easy to understand and read
- Align your content with EAT guideline
- Include information that solves the searcher’s problem
With these suggestions, you should be able to create effective content for your searchers. Now comes the “linkers.” These are individuals who might want to read and link your content to their website.
Designing your content for linkers can help your website gain links from an external website – which is a crucial ranking factor. The more backlinks you have from a unique domain, the higher your website’s ranking and ability to attract traffic will be.
Since there is an advantage of getting ranked, you might think of focusing just on the linkers, which is totally justified. There is nothing wrong with having a minimal search volume. As long as your content is attractive to the target audience, nothing matters!
4.3- Optimize description and title tags
Title tags are visible on the SERPs, and they play a key role in getting your website ranked, thereby proving an effective web design solution. Hence working on optimizing them should be your focus.
- Create a title tag that is both eye-catching and accurate
- Incorporate target keywords in the title.
- Ensure to keep them brief yet informative (60 characters).
As mentioned, title tags are visible on SERPs, meaning online visitors read them, too. So, ensure to –
- Make the title tag compelling, so it reassures the readers that this is the content they have been looking for.
- Keep the description no longer than 920px.
- Ensure the description is relevant to the page’s title.
- Create an original and unique description for every page.
4.4- Focus on adding schema markups
To help search engines comprehend your content and represent it on the search engines, focusing on schema markups is vital.
You can use different types of schemas for different content types. The notion behind using schema is to help Google show rich search results for your web pages, thereby bringing more clicks to your business.
Since schema markups deal with coding, it is best to work with website design companies known for excellent coding knowledge.
4.5- Utilize descriptive yet short URLs
Creating short yet descriptive URLs is one of the effective web design solutions used by experts.
While creating the URL, it is important to keep the user in mind. Avoid creating an overly nested structure; instead, include details that clearly indicate what the page is actually about.
The URL should also indicate where on the site structure an online user currently is.
4.6- Optimize the images
When it comes to image optimization, you need to focus on three things –
- Compress images, so they don’t impact the loading speed.
- Use descriptive image file names to make it easy for search engines to comprehend.
- Add descriptive alt texts so the search engines can comprehend your page’s context and help you with ranking on Google Images.
4.7- Do internal linking
Internal linking is an action of linking different pages of the same website. Since internal linking helps with ranking, too, it is important to make no mistakes.
Search engines use internal linking to –
- Discover new pages
- Pass the link equity between the pages
- Comprehend what a page is about
5- Over to you
By now, you might know that building an SEO-friendly website requires a lot of work. And unfortunately, there is no simple and fast shortcut to it. But, with the tips and tricks already in front of you, we are sure you will be able to deliver top-notch web design services to your client.
But if you wish to do your job easy, consider meeting with the SEO Reseller experts to diversify your website design services. Our competent and devoted team of SEO experts will help you make digital marketing both an easy and effective strategy for your clients.
