It is important to be visible on the major search engines to get traffic to your website. In order for you to be visible, the search engine must know what your website is about, and this is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play. There are many aspects of SEO, ranging from text to links and structure. But it is not just about making the page understandable for search engines, you have to make the website understandable for the users as well.
The search engine’s job is to find the best website based on what you have written in the search bar, and therefore it is important that you make it clear to the search engine what your website is about. Even though robots only get smarter and smarter, they still need some help. Previously SEO was all about keywords- if you just repeated a keyword enough times on your site, Google would give you a higher ranking. But as the search engines become smarter and smarter, todays search engine environment needs to have good content to get a high rank and not just frequent use of keywords. Keywords are still important, but quality is more important than quantity.
Technical SEO
It is important to lay a good foundation, which starts with the technical side of SEO. The first thing that users see in the search result is Meta Title and Meta Description. Hence, make sure the text is relevant and that it gives an honest picture of what the user will encounter on the page. Also, make sure you give each page a unique title. It is also important to have a good URL and URL structure. If the website is to be perceived as user-friendly, it is important that a URL is clean and that you understand what the website is about.
Further, SEO is about making your website understandable for the search engines, but it is also about making it understandable to people. Ease of use is important for a good SEO. By having a mobile-friendly page and responsive design, Google will give you higher scores and rankings. Users today expect webpages to be loaded immediately and easy to navigate. If a website takes a long time to load, users become tired of waiting and you will experience high bounce rates. By using AMP (accelerated mobile page) the website will load immediately and the user will experiences the page as easy, convenient and stress-free.
The importance of good content
Good content on your website is important for visibility. It is important for the search engines but also for the users. Today, users set high standards for web sites and if we cannot find what we are looking for straight away, we try another website. Thus, it is essential that your website has a good structure.
Also, with the vast landscape of webpages we often have to scroll through a lot of texts, so it is more important with titles and sub titles to get a clear overview. This will give the user a clear picture of what is relevant for them to read. Consequently, make sure to emphasize the main points early in the text and not make the text unnecessary long. In order for search engines to understand it in the same way as the user, it is critical that you correctly mark the content. The main title should always be H1, sub titles are marked with H2, H3, H4, etc. by relevance. You can easily do this in your CMS tool.
Furthermore, the landing page is the first thing that the user sees after they have clicked on the search result. Here the content must be relevant and concrete. Therefore, it is wise to have more than one call-to-action item. Having clear call-to-actions will help you create a good user experience and you can lead the user around on your website. This also creates internal links which will help the search engines to understand the structure of your website. A call-to-action element can be anything from buttons/ forms or link to Facebook or Linkedin. These calls-to-actions are very useful when it comes to tracking and you can easily see if you have achieved the desired effect. Blogging is also an effective way to become more visible in search engines. The more posts you have on your website, the more opportunities you have to appear in the search engines, and it will make it easier for users to find you. Before you start a blog, you may want to think through who your audience is, what to write about and how often you have the opportunity to upload posts.
Images are also important for good visibility. Alt-Tags is a short text that tells you what presented. Each image should have a unique Alt-Tag and should be formed as a sentence. This is because the search engine should understand the content of the image, but also in terms of universal design. This gives high value in Google and you can show up in image search as well. In addition, good pictures help to enhance the content.
Analysis
In order to achieve good SEO, it is imperative to get a picture of today’s situation. You need to get to know the users, what they are searching for, how they move around on your website, where the traffic comes from an so on. There are many tools for doing an SEO analysis and by combining it with tools like Google Search Control and Google Analytics you will get a good picture of your situation. It is also critical to measure progress and see if you are achieving the desired effects. Over time, you will get a good overview of how your website performs and what you should focus on moving forward.
The user in focus
Today, most people use a search engine to navigate online. So, if the search engine can’t find your website, users will not be able to either. It is important to see usability and SEO together as a whole. The search engine should deliver the best results based on what the user is searching for, and that result should be your website. So, as a last and final statement; put the users in focus, follow these guidelines, and SEO will be your best friend towards visibility of your business and customer satisfaction.