SEOkay: How To Make Google Like Your Website

It can be all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that building a website is as simple as putting together some nice designs. People across the world struggle with search engine optimization, with tools like Google being incredibly hard to sway when you’re trying to get betting rankings. Using the right SEO practices can help with this, but a lot of work goes into this area and you need to make sure that you’ve dotted every I and cross every T. Let’s take a look at some of the most crucial and fundamental aspects of SEO to get you started.

On-Site Background SEO

You need to make sure that your website is built for SEO before you start adding content to it. Platforms like WordPress and Shopify can make this easier for you, providing pre-made templates that are already designed to appeal to search engines. There are a number of areas that you need to work on before you can start on your on-page SEO.

• Website Speed: Google, Bing, and Yahoo all work extremely hard to make sure that their users have a good experience, and speed ties into this greatly. Your website needs to run quickly on smartphones, laptops, and any other device, and this means that you may need to optimize it. Tools like Lighthouse are great for this, as they tell you exactly what needs to be improved.
• Robots.txt & Sitemap.xml: Your website has background files that give search engines like Google more information about your website. Sitemaps are particularly important, as they show search engines all of your pages and their structure, making it easier to index the website. Plugins like WordPress’ Yoast can be very helpful as you go through this.
• Broken Links/Redirects: Web pages that don’t exist, redirects that have been put into place, and any other updates to your site structure need to be provided to search engines with your Sitemap file. With Google, this process can be handled manually through Google Search Console.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO has to be performed whenever you add new content to your website. Search engines can’t read pages as humans can, and this means that they have to rely on certain cues to help them to understand the sites that they index. You need to make sure that your on-page SEO is on point if you want your pages to rank well. Tools like SEObility and Neil Patel’s UberSuggest can help you with this process, giving you hints and tips to improve your on-page SEO.

• HTML Structure: HTML is the building block used for most websites. Title tags, lists, and the other HTML elements you use can help search engines to better understand the content you’ve put together. For example, using a single H1 tag for a title will show platforms like Google that it is the most important heading on the page.
• Links: Internal links can be a powerful tool when you’re trying to make a website stand out on search engines. Much like your sitemap, links can help sites like Google to understand the layout of your site, and this can help you to achieve better search results. You should always use anchor text that contains keywords for this.
• Keywords: Search engines use keywords to pair websites to searches, and this means that you need to have keywords on your website that people are likely to search for when they are looking for you. Tools like UberSuggest can help with this, as they tell you which keywords you’re ranking for and how to improve.
• Meta Info: Webpages always have meta titles and descriptions tied to them that search engines can use for their titles and text snippets. You should always set these manually, working hard to ensure that they contain keywords, questions, and other features that are likely to improve your click-through rates.
• Content: Search engines love to see websites that have loads of new content on them, and they will usually prioritize sites like this in searches. Writing a blog is the best way to continually add content to your website, though you could also consider creating additional service pages, landing pages, and other resources to draw people in.

Off-Site SEO

Many people make the mistake of thinking that SEO only applies to their own website. In reality, though, there are loads of ways to improve your SEO without making any changes to your own website at all, and you need to leverage these options if you want the best results overall. It can take quite a lot of work to nail your off-site SEO, but this can be well worth it.

• Backlinks: They are often described as the holy grail of SEO, but what are backlinks? Having a reputable and popular website post a link to your own site shows search engines that you are trusted, while also helping them to connect your content to relevant searches. Guest blogging, posting on directories and having your content used as sources in articles are all great ways to start building backlinks for your website.
• Local SEO: Search engines have long been using local SEO tools to give small businesses a chance to stand out in their local area. By signing up for tools like Google My Business, you can boost your search presence and give yourself a headstart with your wider SEO. This option can get you into searches without performing any traditional SEO work.

SEO can be one of the trickiest parts of running a modern business. Falling into the category of marketing, people often assume that they can wing it with their SEO and get results. In reality, though, you need to work extremely hard to achieve good rankings on sites like Google. You can pay other companies to help you with this, but it will always help to learn about the basics yourself to make sure that you can see the work that is being done. Thankfully, regular work on SEO almost always pays off.