How to optimise webpage for SEO
If you have an online website, you should be aware of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), and in particular, why it is important to your business.
Search engine optimization, simply put, is the marketing and promotion of your website, through optimizing many on the page and off page factors of your website.
If completed correctly, you should start to see your website improve in the rankings on your targeted search engines, and in turn, an improvement of traffic to your website.
If you are new to the world of SEO, here is a top list of some of the more important factors to get right on your website to ensure success:
– Choosing the right keywords
Choosing the right keywords, is perhaps one of the most important, yet overlooked aspects of search engine optimization, and is a common mistake by many online marketers when it comes to promoting their website.
The more targeted the keywords you choose for your business product or service, the better of the quality of traffic you will receive, and the higher conversion of that traffic.
When looking at keywords to target, look for more targeted keywords which would be easier to rank for initially, and should provide more sales per customer straight away.
For example, if one is dealing with a product like ‘purple rounded candles’ it is a good thing to target the phrases ‘purple rounded candles’ and avoid targeting terms that might have higher search volume.
But are very broad and usually have more competing websites, such as ’rounded candles’ or ‘purple candles’. This doesn’t apply to every industry, however in most cases; this would be the best way to start earning from your online website while you wait for more keywords to rank.
– H1 tags, meta tags, and Title tags
Google appreciates knowing what each of your websites entails. In which way do you inform Google your page is about rounded purple candles?
By the use of the right meta tags and keywords. The headline tag is the text you see in the blue bar at the top of your browser on the respective page you are viewing.
Fill this with your keyword for the product you are promoting, and also ensure you write a quality description and include your keywords in the meta tags too.
Once you have completed these steps, ensure you have one H1 heading on the page with your keywords in also.
This helps Google understand the main theme of the page it is crawling, and will also help that page rank for its particular keyphrases.
– Sitemaps
Although not necessarily an on-page factor, but by implementing a valid and readable sitemap on your website. will ensure search engines are fully aware of all your webpages.
They then can find them, index them, and show them off to people looking for websites such as yours.
Sitemaps are generally in XML format, and there are several free sites online where you can create a free sitemap.
– Alt Tags And Flash
It’s great to include a few images on a webpage; this helps the viewer quickly understand the topic at hand and relate to the content.
But many people are still unaware that images cannot be read by Google, and are seen simply as a ‘block.’ To overcome this, use the ALT tag to add keywords to the images which are relevant to the pages they are on. Only use a few keywords or a sentence, do not list lots of keywords, as this can have a negative effect.
Also, a page which is full of images and no text, or displayed using Flash is not the best way to help promote your site. Like images, search engines cannot read flash scripting or videos, and as such, a website built on Flash are much harder to rank due to the low content which is readable.
These are some of the basics you should consider when optimizing your website. These tasks should be carried out before you consider moving to off page factors, such as link building, social media marketing, and video marketing.
Optimizing the content of an established site correctly, can also sometimes result in positive improvements of your rankings.
Michelle Purcell