There are many things to do when designing (or revamping) your website. For many businesses, the thought to improve SEO never crosses their minds. But trust me when I say that—if you want every other part of your website to be optimized for both marketing and Customer Experience, an SEO-friendly website should be your goal above all else.
We all know that with a weak foundation, everything you build crumbles over time. Here are some things we do to make sure our clients’ sites—and their SEO strategy—are built to last.
Tips to Improve SEO
Organize content
The way your content is organized should be intuitive if you want a high-ranking, user-friendly site. How?
- Make sure your content has a theme: For example, Success Coaching
- If you create sub-pages, make sure their content is relevant to the theme: i.e. Blog, Programs and Retreats, Pricing, Resources, and so on.
- Don’t overdo it. Keep the focus of each page simple and clear. You can always add more pages as you add products, services, and content to your site.
Remember: Google “reads” your site to see how/if a searcher would read it, too. Organize your content accordingly!
Make every page fast
Page speed has been a ranking factor for Google since 2010. If your site load times are fast, and it’s easy to get from one page to another, your rankings will be higher on users’ Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
It’s important you check load times across devices, too. The mobile searcher’s experience is only becoming more important for Google. If you’re not sure how fast your site is, Google has a page speed analysis tool (and detailed reports), to show you what needs work.
Make it mobile-friendly
If you only take one thing from this, here it is: Google is going mobile-first. That means that pages that are mobile-friendly, and optimized for mobile searching, automatically rank higher than those that only work on desktops. Make sure–before you move your marketing efforts offline–that your site is optimized for mobile.
Use structured data
Structured data—also known as Schema—is code that allows your content to be “read” and understood by machines, like Google Bots. While it won’t affect rankings, it can affect how your content is displayed when someone finds it on Google.
Google knows, for example, that 123 Sesame Street is an address. But when a schema is applied to that string of numbers and letters, it can “learn” and “remember” it ’s home to the stars of a beloved children’s show.
Similarly, schema can help Google pick out information about your business—like addresses, reviews, or phone numbers—and display it correctly for users to see before they even click on your site.
Links still matter
Even though Google’s technology for ranking web pages has become super sophisticated, links still matter in your rankings. Make your navigation easy, with URLs that are easy to read, and make sure all your pages are linked to at least one other pages on your site. [Orphaned pages, which don’t have internal links, will bump your page down in its SEO rankings.]
Bottom line
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist, or a marketer, to improve SEO on your website. Don’t worry, you can implement many SEO fixes yourself. But if you’re doing a total overhaul, make sure you’ve got a marketing team in your corner who will build your site, and your content, on a strong, optimized foundation.
