How to Create an SEO Friendly Foundation for your Website
Having a beautiful, well designed website is not enough these days. If you really want to acquire the best online presence, then search engine optimization is necessary. SEO is a way one can improve their sites visibility in search engines through organic search results.
By following this SEO friendly foundation you will gain more visibility online, and in turn will bring more qualified leads to your site.
1. Keywords – The Meat of Search Engine Optimization
A very important part of any SEO campaign is the keywords. If you are using incorrect keywords, search engines will not help your target market find you. It is very important to review the key goals and objectives of your business before starting to develop your website. Decide if you wish to target a local area or create a global campaign. Determine what are the main services or products you wish to provide and who is your ideal customer.
2. Place the proper keywords in the right area of the page
For Google to successfully integrate your web pages into its search engine, you must first tell Google what the page is about. It is important to place the proper keywords in the right area of the page but at the same time not overdo it. Some best placement practices are as follows:
- Navigation
- Title tag
- Meta description and keywords
- H1, H2 and H3 tags
- Bullet points
- Alt text
- The main website copy
- Internal links
- URL’s
- File / folder names
3. Create SEO friendly structure
To develop SEO friendly navigation one must create a structure that a search engine can follow. A major offender of search engines not being able to find a website is having the navigation built using images instead of text.
Make sure your navigation and buttons are text based and not image based. Using CSS one can achieve similar results to that of using Photoshop tricks, and this will also increase your speed and load time on your site which is important.
4. Use friendly URL’s that include keywords
Using SEO-friendly URL’s means a search engine and visitor can quickly identify what your page is all about. It is also good practice to use keywords within your URL as this tells the search engines what the page is all about.
- An example of a poor URL: http://www.domain.com/services/item1?=335567
- A good, more descriptive URL: http://www.domain.com/patio-furniture/deep-seating
You will notice that the second option contains a better selection of keywords which in turn will help the SEO efforts to index your site.
5. Name all your images using a descriptive keyword
It is a very good practice to name all your images using a descriptive keyword. A fitting file name can be the difference between your image appearing in Google image searches or not. An example is if you name your image “abc123.jpg” vs “patio-furniture.jpg”. The latter has a better chance of being found.
Some best practice tips for when it comes to incorporating images onto your website are:
- Optimize your images for the web and to achieve faster load time. A web image should be 72 dpi for the screen and not 300 dpi which is for print.
- By keeping images small this will allow slower internet connections and mobile visitors to get a good viewing experience.
- Incorporate the proper keywords into your ALT tag as search engines cannot read images but do look at the alt tags.
- Place your images inside a folder named “images” or something similar so the final URL of the image looks something like this: /images/image.jpg.
Following these few, but important steps should ensure your website reaches the best visibility in search engines. There is nothing better than having a solid foundation on your website to help you achieve your online goals.
Want to learn more about using the web to drive sales? Download our Guide to Generating Better Leads Online!
