Having a strong digital presence is very important for the success of any business or website. Search Engine Optimization, commonly known as SEO, plays a pivotal role in improving your website’s visibility on search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. An SEO-friendly website is one that is optimized to rank well in search engine results, making it easier for potential visitors to discover and explore. This introduction will guide you through the fundamental principles of creating an SEO-friendly website, ensuring that your online platform is not only aesthetically pleasing but also strategically designed to attract organic traffic and achieve higher search engine rankings.
Important Topics for Creating an SEO Friendly Website
What does SEO-Friendly Website mean?
An “SEO-friendly website” refers to a website that is well designed and optimized for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. to help them understand the content of the website and rank it higher in search results. An SEO-friendly website is one that is designed and optimized to rank well in search engine results pages (SERPs). This means that the website is easy for search engines to crawl and understand and that the content is relevant and informative.
There are many factors that contribute to an SEO-friendly website, including:
- Website structure: The website should have a clear and logical structure, with well-organized pages and categories.
- Content: The website content should be high-quality, informative, and relevant to the target audience. It should also be optimized for search engines by using relevant keywords and phrases.
- Technical SEO: The website should be technically sound, with fast loading times, mobile-friendly design, and secure HTTPS encryption.
SEO-friendly websites are important because they can help businesses attract more visitors and potential customers. When a website ranks well in SERPs, it is more likely to be seen by people who are searching for the products or services that the business offers.
Why is it Important for a business to have an SEO-friendly website?
An SEO-friendly website is very important for businesses for several reasons, as it directly impacts their online visibility, user experience, and overall success. This is because when someone types your business name or company name your website should appear at the top. Also when someone wants to find specific information about a product related to your business your website should also appear in Google search results for that keyword.
- Online Presence: An SEO friendly website ranks higher in search results. This means that more potential customers will be able to find the website when they search for information or products like yours.
- More Traffic: A higher ranking in search results leads to more traffic to your website so more people will be able to learn about your business and what you have to offer.
- Brand Awareness: When your website ranks higher in search results, it helps to improve brand awareness for your business. This is because people are more likely to trust and remember brands that they see frequently.
- More leads and sales: More traffic to your website leads to more leads and sales. People are more likely to be interested in what you have to offer if they reach your website through search engines than if they found your website through other channels, such as advertising.
An SEO-friendly website can also help to improve the user experience of your website. For example, an SEO-friendly website will typically have a clear and logical structure, making it easy for visitors to find the information they are looking for. Additionally, an SEO-friendly website will typically be mobile-friendly, so that visitors can access it from any device.
Tips to Create an SEO-Friendly Website
- Keyword Research: Identify the keywords that your target audience is likely to use when searching for information or products like yours. You can use a variety of tools to do keyword research, such as Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush.
- Optimize Your Content: Use your target keywords throughout your content, including in the title tags, meta descriptions, and body text. However, avoid keyword stuffing, which is the practice of overuse of keywords in a way that is unnatural or spammy.
- Improve Page Speed: A fast loading website is more likely to rank higher in search results and provide a good user experience. You can improve your website’s loading speed by optimizing your images, using a caching plugin, and choosing a good web hosting provider.
- Mobile Friendliness: It is very important for a website to look good both in smartphones and desktops, so all websites must be responsive or mobile friendly.
- Configure Google Search Console: You should always submit your website to google search console for indexing, security, mobile usability, structured data, URL inspection, Coverage Report, crawl stats etc.
- Configure Bing Webmaster Tool: You should also submit your website to Microsoft Bing as it is a good practice for several reasons, similar to why you would configure Google Search Console like indexing, Structured Data Markup, Keyword Research, Sitemap Submission, Search Performance Insights, Geo-Targeting etc.
- Making and Submitting Sitemap: Creating and submitting a sitemap for your website is not an absolute must, but it is highly recommended for several important reasons like Improved Search Engine Crawling, Better Control, Helps web crawlers to crawl pages found in sitemap, etc. Sitemaps for large websites are absolutely compulsory and can ensure all pages are discovered and crawl by search engine bots.
- Make a robots.txt file: Creating a robots.txt file is a critical element of managing your website’s interaction with web crawlers, such as search engine bots. Site owners can here instruct crawlers not to index certain pages or directories on your website. To do this, you would typically use the “Disallow” directive in your robots.txt file to specify which parts of your website should not be crawled and indexed by search engines.
- Ensure that your website is indexable: You should remove the noindex meta robots tag from pages that you need to index and rank on search engines and include meta index tag in those pages instructing search engines not to index it.
- Ensure that your website is accessible at only one domain: There can be many versions of a website like https://www.mydomain.com, https://mydomain.com and http://mydomain.com, they all are one website but in the eyes of search engines they all are different websites. So we need to redirect these urls to single url which we need to keep ie. domain or website with www or non-www. If you are using wordpress you can do this in .htaccess file or you can also add page rules in cloudfare for this purpose if your domain is added to cloudfare.
- Well Structured: Make sure that your website is easy for search engines to crawl and index. Use a logical sitemap and descriptive URLs.
- Get Backlinks: Backlinks are links from other websites to your own. Backlinks from high-quality websites are a signal to search engines that your website is authoritative and trustworthy. You can create high quality articles so that high authority websites can link to you.
- Social Media promotion: You can promote your website on social media by sharing your content and interacting with your followers. You can also promote your website on other websites by guest blogging and submitting your website to directories.
- On Page SEO: On-Page SEO refers to the strategies and optimization techniques that are implemented directly on the articles or pages of your website. These strategies are under your control, allowing you to fine-tune your site for search engines and users.
- Off Page SEO: Off-Page SEO focuses on strategies and activities that occur outside your website but have an impact on its search engine rankings and credibility. This type of SEO emphasizes building authority, trust, and relevance for your site through external factors.
Tools required for creating SEO-friendly website
- Keyword research tools, Backlink Analysis Tools, Rank Checking tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, Google Keyword Planner etc.
- Content Management System like WordPress or Joomla or any other.
- SEO plugins like Rank Math or Yoast SEO.
- Web Analytics Tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
- Local SEO Tools like Google MyBusiness.
- Website speed checking tools like PageSpeed Insights and Gtmetrix.
You should always keep in mind that the specific tools you need may vary based on your website’s platform, goals, and the nature of your business. It’s important to continually monitor your website’s performance and adapt your SEO strategy as needed.
Improve the Usability of your website
- Check to see if your website is mobile-friendly: To appear in search results make sure that your website is mobile friendly and is not breaking the mobile screen. It should be responsive. To check its responsiveness you can use this https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly Mobile Friendly test tool by google. Moreover search console can also tell which page is mobile friendly and which is not.
- Check that your website loads quickly: For users point of view speed of the website is very important. Generally a website’s page should open between 0-2 seconds but 3 seconds is also considered good. So you should create a high speed website removing unnecessary things from website. For checking website performance you can use google’s Pagespeed Insights tool at https://pagespeed.web.dev/.
- Make sure HTTPS is being used: Nowadays using https is a must. It is important as HTTPS encrypts the data transmitted between a user’s web browser and the web server, It is a ranking factor, protects users sensitive data, protects from hacker attacks, etc.
- Skip the invasive interstitials: “Skip the invasive interstitials” means avoiding the use of intrusive or disruptive pop-ups or overlays on a website. “Interstitials” refer to elements that appear on top of the main content of a webpage, often in the form of pop-up windows, full-page overlays, or modals. They should not be included in a page as it is not good for user experience.
Create a search-focused website
- Pick the appropriate keyword: Selecting the right keyword is a critical step in the world of online content creation and search engine optimization (SEO). Suppose you are in a mobile business and have a deep knowledge of smartphones, then you should only pick those keywords which are related to smartphone only.
- Make your material engaging and beneficial: Crafting content that stands out and engages your audience requires careful planning, attention to detail, and a focus on delivering value. It should solve user’s problems and should be up to date. It should not misguide the user with wrong information and review about a particular thing. Even google is very strict regarding Affiliate websites misguiding users and providing biased reviews.
- Improve the tags for the title and description: Ensure that your title and description tags are both informative and include your target keyword such as “Best Smartphones 2023” for article related to “Best Smartphones.” This will not only help with search engine rankings but also trigger users to click on your content in search results.
- Simplify schema markup: Schema data provides search engines with structured data, making it easier for them to understand your content and present it in rich snippets. For general an article schema will include publish date, updated date, title, description and job schema will include title, description, job application date, last date to apply, monthly salary, job location, advertisment no. etc. Make sure to implement schema markup appropriately for your content to enhance its visibility in search results.
- Make your URLs short and informative: Short and descriptive URLs are not only user-friendly but also help search engines understand the content of your pages. Ensure that your URLs are concise and include relevant keywords where appropriate. For example in a biography article we should use url as “david-warner-biography” instead of “david-warner-biography-age-height-net-worth-cars-income-wife-family-children”.
- Link to appropriate resources: External and internal linking can significantly enhance your content. When linking to external resources, ensure they are reliable and relevant to your topic. For example in an article related to smartphones you can link to other big websites such as Iphone, POCO, One Plus etc. and also to Wikipedia for informational content.
- Image optimization: Images are essential in making your content visually appealing. Optimize your images by compressing them for faster page loading and providing descriptive alt text. This helps with both user experience and search engine rankings. You should always use unique and visually appealing images for SEO. So try to create or edit your own images instead of using someone else’s work.
- Include internal linking: Internal linking is a powerful SEO technique. Within your content, link to other relevant pages on your website to keep users engaged and guide them to more valuable information. It can also improve indexing and frequent crawl of your page because when google bot crawls a page then it might also crawl the internal page links.
Conclusion
SEO is an ongoing process, and it may take time to see significant results. Stay up-to-date with industry trends and search engine algorithm changes to adapt and refine your SEO strategy as needed. If you follow these tips, you can create an SEO-friendly website that will help you attract more visitors and potential customers.