Every website owner is looking for ways to improve its visibility and by extension the traffic on their websites daily. There would not be any point having a website if it doesn’t matter if people visit it or not. Regardless of what you do, the Internet is replete with similar offerings and you need a proper strategy to ensure your site receives significant traffic on a daily basis. A major way to improve your website’s visibility is to maximize the use of SEO.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), if done properly, will improve the visibility of your website in search engine result pages (SERPs). Some firms pay a lot of money for SEO experts to improve their search engine ranking. These experts understand the algorithm and the key things to do to ensure websites are visible even in a sea of other websites offering similar products and/or services. The amount paid by these firms determines how far SEO experts will push their websites on the ranking order. The cost of getting your website to rank among the first two pages can be very high. Not everyone can afford to engage the service of an SEO expert in order to get visibility. Fortunately, some SEO experts frequently share tips on how to optimize your website for SEO.
Static URL Address
Static and dynamic are the two types of URL addresses that we have. These two addresses are easily understood by search engines, but human beings find dynamic addresses difficult to relate to.
Sample of dynamic URL:
Domain-name.com/category/?p=123456
Sample of static URL:
Domain-name.com/category/best-SEO-practices
The default URL address of a blog post or WordPress is dynamic. When published, the address is converted to static by WordPress. The static address includes some random keywords from the post; you can edit these keywords to exactly what you would like to be.
Tools
To do SEO, you need some tools. These tools will help you automate some of the process. Because SEO is very tasky, using tools to automate some of the process is a smart thing to do. This article, The 16 Best Backlink Checkers – Free and Paid SEO Backlink Tools, will give you a good head start on some of the best SEO tools you should consider for your SEO tasks. The good thing is some of the SEO tools that you really need are not over expensive and will give you a good ROI if used properly.
Use of Hyphen
When editing your URL, ensure you use hyphens between words rather than underscore. For example, Google reads words separated by underscores as just a word: best_seo_content will be interpreted as best SEO content hence making it difficult to read. Separate words with hyphens for easy reading: best-SEO-content will be interpreted as best SEO content which is very easy and straightforward.
One Primary Keyword
When including keywords in your URL, experts say though you can include more than one keywords, you should keep it to just a keyword phrase which should be included directly in the URL address.
Intuitive, Clear and Updated Website Structure
Search engine crawlers are responsible for indexing the pages and subpages of your website. If your website is not properly structured, it will be difficult for SEO to find and index your pages and subpages.
Besides the importance of well-structured websites to SEO, people who use your site are also a major factor. A website with intuitive navigation helps people visiting your website to get what they want in the least time possible. Experts say you should structure your website in a way that visitors will find what they need with a maximum of three clicks.
Brief, Descriptive and Relevant URL Address
When editing the URL address, make sure it is brief, descriptive and relevant in the period. Visitors should be able to tell what to expect from your website by looking at your URL. It also enhances the effectiveness of SEO for your website.
Title Tags
Ensure every page of your website has an interesting title tag. A title tag clearly communicates the purpose of your domain. It is usually a very short, clear and catchy sentence. Your title tag will appear on social media, SERPs as well as external pages.
Use ALT Attributes For All Images
Ensure all the images on your website are in ALT attributes because images are not read by search engines except they are in the ALT text.
Include Location in your Keywords
Inclusion of location for your keywords optimizes your website and business for local searches hence increasing the chance of getting local clients.
Place keywords in anchor texts, subheadings, and headlines. Just like the position of a billboard determines its visibility, your keywords don’t have the same exposure in different places on your website. Headlines, subheadings and highlighted portions of your text are key positions to put your keywords for better exposure.
Keywords In Your Content
All the content on your website should contain a sufficient number of keywords. Don’t just put the keywords randomly, make sure they fit into the context otherwise you will piss users off by keyword stuffing.
SEO makes a whole lot of difference in the visibility of your website, follow the above tips, as given by experts, and your website will be optimized for SEO. However, you need to be consistent and patient. SEO takes some time and consistency to get the desired results.
If you are looking for a quick fix, SEO is not for you. And if you are lazy and do not enjoy researching, you should stay away from SEO. This because the landscape keeps changing in regards to SEO and you need to continually learn new tricks in order to continue to do well with your website’s SEO wise. To really do well in SEO and continue to do well in it, you will need to keep refreshing your knowledge base by signing up for newsletters of the really very good SEO experts.
Importantly, you should not try to game the system. Once you do and the search engines find out, your site will likely lose its ranking and at worst get banned.