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- July 2, 2018
A Beginner’s Guide to Getting Your Website SEO-Ready
There are tools out there that let you create your content and format it, so it fits your site properly and integrates images or videos, etc. All of this contributes to making your site SEO-ready.
Most people are unaware that there are loads of things that contribute to making your business website SEO-ready. Some assume it means you have to fill your site with different keywords, and you’re good to go. Alas, this won’t work! Instead, read this guide and learn how to make your website SEO-ready.
Make Your Website Easy for People to Use
Accessibility and user experience are very important when it comes to SEO and Google rankings. Google is a very clever search engine, and it’s the best one around by far. As such, it has very high standards regarding websites. It doesn’t want to direct millions of users to sites that offer a poor experience. It wants to point them towards the best websites around, meaning they spend less time being frustrated.
Consequently, your site will suffer if the user experience is below par. Plenty of things come into play here; page loading speeds being a prominent one. If your pages take too long to load, then users will become frustrated and leave. This results in a high bounce rate for your site, which shows Google that your website clearly can’t be any good as loads of people view it and leave right away. So, focus on making your site as speedy as can be. The pages should load instantly, and part of achieving this is ensuring you don’t have too much stuff on each page. Too many pieces of information take too long to load, which scuppers your speed.
In conjunction with this, your website needs to be easy for people to get around. Is there anything more annoying than a website without any clear navigation options? You should have a navigation bar that allows users to click on different pages and go where they need to be. It should be so easy for them to spot this, and they shouldn’t have to spend ages trying to figure out how to find the page they want. Likewise, they should be able to search your site for specific things, so an internal search engine is needed.
These things help make your website easier for people to use. As a result, you’ll end up in Google’s good books, and can receive a rankings boost. There are other things to take into account too, and the best thing to do is to think about what you hate about websites. Make a list, then ensure your site doesn’t do any of those things!
Create Effective Content
If you paid attention to the Google algorithm updates last year, then you’ll remember something called Fred coming along and making a big splash. Essentially, this was an update that placed more emphasis on the need for quality website content. You can no longer just create a basic website and have no content on it. Well, you can, but you won’t rank highly and will be struck with penalties.
There are plenty of things to consider when it comes to creating effective content for your website. Firstly, you should have some keywords in mind. Once you’ve got them, you just need to write content that includes them naturally and doesn’t stuff them in aimlessly.
The content itself should serve people in some way. From a busienss perspective, everyone that visits your site should gain something from your content. Whether this means learning more about your services or seeing descriptions of your products; they should gain something from it, it shouldn’t just be gibberish. Your content should be formatted properly too, and this is where something like a content planner can come in handy. There are tools out there that let you create your content and format it, so it fits your site properly and integrates images or videos, etc. All of this contributes to making your site SEO-ready.
Start a Link Building Strategy
Getting your website SEO-ready doesn’t just mean you have to focus on the internal aspects of your site. There are also some off-site things to concern yourself with, mainly link building. This is a strategy that’s been in the SEO world for years, and it’s proven to be successful. There have been tweaks to link building since it first came about, so pay attention!
This strategy is all about building a catalog of links from around the web that point back to your site. The main thing to worry about is how you get these links. Some people think you can just pay for them to be randomly generated, but this will result in penalties. Some also believe you can go around spamming a link to your site in every comment section on the internet. Again, this won’t work and will result in penalties! Instead, you need to get links from other authentic websites. The easiest way to do this is by starting a blogger outreach program. You reach out to loads of bloggers and ask them to publish content that includes a link to your site. It doesn’t have to be promotional, they can write about anything they want, as long as they include a keyword and link to your website.
This is the natural way to link-build, and it is the most effective way these days. When a site has loads of backlinks, then Google takes notice. It starts to think, hmm this site must an authoritative source of sorts or else all these other websites wouldn’t be linking to it. So, they think you’re worth noticing and will bump you up the rankings.
Yes, there is a lot of information to process here. But, the easiest way to look at things is to split them up into the three headings provided. Focus on user experience, website content, and link building. Each of these things will get you to do loads of other things that help make your website SEO-ready. So, when you launch it, you should find yourself with a very nice ranking position for your target keywords.