For any web-master, it’s important to understand and know the basics toward optimizing your website, as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a key factor toward being found in search engines by your target market. It’s also not something you would only want to do once, as it is an ongoing process which requires some form of monitoring and even fine tuning while you develop your website further. There are many things to consider when it comes to your websites optimization. Search engine crawlers will find your any newly created website on a fresh domain soon enough, along with it’s respective pages and posts. Upon visiting your website, these search engine crawlers or spiders will be sifting through the meta data, the content of each individual page with the keywords used within the content to determine where to place your website in search engine ranks. Search engine crawlers look at the relevance of each page from meta, to content and the more relevant the content then there is a higher chance your website will be placed toward the top of search results for each specific keyword or search string which contains a few words or more. The entire process of a websites search engine optimization, takes into account both off page SEO, and on page SEO which is your website. Off page SEO, are the likes of other websites which are pointing to your domain or posts within your website itself, but firstly we will look at your website, for it’s meta tag use, which also includes the verification meta from the likes of Bing and Google webmasters.
The necessary meta tags toward optimizing your website, are placed in the head section of an html or php file, and more often than not, you will find this in a file called header.php or header.html within the script of your website. These meta tags are not visible to your visitors, as they remain hidden from the make-up of the code. However, on saying this, with the likes of WordPress based scripts for instance, you can find an appropriate SEO plugin to install which will allow you to enter relevant text for your website in the “description” and “title” boxes in the plugin. This will obviously make it easier for you if you’re unfamiliar with editing script files, but if you have an independent stand alone script then it is good practice to learn more toward adding or even editing the meta tags which includes the title tag as shown below.
<head>
<meta charset=“UTF-8”>
<title>Title Of Page, Your Website Name, Or Both</title>
<meta name=“description” content=“The most accurate description with at least one content keyword for optimizing your website page or post.”>
<meta name=“keywords” content=“Keyword1,Keyword2”>
<meta name=“author” content=“Webmaster”>
</head>
Below the above tags, you will want to place the verification meta from major search engines such as, Google, Bing, Yandex, and you may also like to work with Alexa.
There are some important tags which can at times be forgotten, these are the alt tag which sit within the code behind the pictures on your website ie: alt=”business logo”. All pictures should have an alt tag, which is just a short description, or a name you would give to this picture and this will help with the optimization of the page which displays any images.
Work Around Niche Keywords Toward Optimizing Your Website
The main keywords for the best optimization of your website, are those key words which are most relevant to your on-page content, being the text and images which will incorporate the alt tags. By analyzing the page, looking at your products listed, the service you have written about, or the main focal point itself as you would have mentioned in any one post or page, and that there or are your target key words. If you provide a number of services, then it is best to create more pages for each specific service or groups of products for the purpose of optimization for search engine ranking. While you may want to describe everything your company does in a single page, when it comes to SEO, the search engines will see multiple key words and this will have effect on any one target keyword you want to rank for. While moving forward with this in mind, you will want to include your main keyword in the title of your post, the main title extension, and in the content of the page with those same keywords appearing in at least one alt tag on your images. The reason for this, is search engine crawlers or spiders are looking for consistency, from back end of your website through to the front or public view. With both the text and image content optimized with your target or niche keyword, and the meta tags briefly describing the same content with your keywords included, you will be rewarded with a higher rank for that page in search engines and even higher with a Digital Marketing Agency.
Permalinks & URL Structure
If you find you have the option to modify or creating the permalinks before posting your page or post, take into consideration the URL structure. The more readable it is by the human eye, then the better, as search engines also prefer a URL that is easier to understand. When you create posts or your website pages, also include your target keywords for any particular post or page, although fortunately many scripts will create these by using the title of the post or page itself. It pays well to work toward the SEO friendly URLs, which will rank better over what we call an ugly URL. If you’re new to the industry, you’ll be happy to know that many scripts have search engine friendly URLs, but there are a few things to note. By ensuring you’re working with a script where there are no underscores, to control or remove unwieldy punctuation characters and try not to overuse keywords in the URL itself.
Creating An XML Sitemap For Search Engines
The creation of the sitemap.xml file is important for search engines, and this is a list of the URLs contained within your site. The XML Sitemap navigates search engine crawlers on their arrival, whether your site is large or small, it is good SEO practice and recommended to always have one in place. You can use a sitemap to provide search engines with the metadata information about any specific types of content on your web pages, such as video, images and mobile content. As your website grows, then the sitemap will grow with it, and it is also beneficial to your website to update as soon as possible to ensure all pages are crawled and indexed accordingly.
This is only a small portion of what it takes toward optimizing your website to reach it’s full potential within search engines, and more will be covered in the near future. For now though, all the best toward the optimization of your website and if you’re looking for a team to work on your website Contact Us!
