The primary aim of SEO is to help your website rank higher in major search engines. Ranking higher means your site will be more visible compared to your competitors. Below are the essential components of an SEO-centric website, which is just what you need to achieve your objective of improving your online visibility.
1.Create Meaningful, Unique, And Relevant Website Content
More targeted traffic equals more customers for you. It’s the right mantra for website owners according to Connective, a US-based creative agency specializing in search engine optimization. So, how do you create more targeted traffic? Well, you ensure that you have an SEO-centric website that offers meaningful, unique, and relevant content. This tactic seems like a no-brainer for many successful online marketers, but accomplishing it is not as straightforward as it looks. Many still commit tons of mistakes with content creation and mess up their chances of reaching their target audience. The first thing you need to master in creating engaging content is having a good grasp of your target market. Who are your targeted visitors, and what do they want? What do they need? Your answers to these questions will give you an idea of the right content that will connect with your visitors. Once you have provided what your niche market needs or wants, your visitors will likely linger longer on your website and decrease your site’s bounce rate. High-bounce rate, low number of targeted visitors, short average time spent by users on your site, and poor conversion rates are some of the signs your online traffic needs a boost. Here are the things you need to remember to improve content to boost your online presence:
Devise a keyword tactic aimed at balancing subject relevance and keyword utilization. Content stuffing, over-optimizing, and link padding are old SEO tricks that are no longer effective.Providing variety in format and content will help maintain visitor attention. Don’t be afraid to use videos, photos, lists, tables, and other new and exciting formats to attract your audience.Learn to logically organize your content to help search engines discover it.
2. Make It Easier For Search Engines To Find Your Pages
Churning quality content is vital in capturing your visitors’ attention, which is a primary reason why SEO is a must for every business. But before you can attract your targeted viewers, search engines need to find your content. You can achieve this by using better meta tags. Begin by incorporating your primary keywords into your header tags. This step means integrating vital keywords into the title of your page so that search engines, such as Google, will understand your page’s context. When they have a better grasp of your content, your page has a better chance of ranking higher for your specified keywords. Aside from headers or page titles, you can also integrate keywords to the following:
ListsPage descriptionsSectionsFootersParagraphsArticles
Again, keyword stuffing is not helpful in the long term, so you must ensure that your keyword placements on your pages are well-balanced and structured. It will go a long way if each of your pages has a unique description and title relevant to the body content or message.
3. Improved Readability To Encourage Website Visitors To Stay Longer
A well-designed website will surely catch attention and can help pique the interests of visitors. Thus, they may want to stay longer to view your pages. However, you can only engage your audience if your site is user-friendly and the information you provide is easily accessible and easy to read. If your audience needs to jump hoops and sort through a lot of stuff before getting the information they want, you will lose them fast. People are fickle-minded and impatient. If they cannot access what they need from your site in one or two clicks, they will lose interest and leave no matter how exciting and clever your web design is. Readability is one crucial component of an SEO-centric website. Do not sacrifice this component for the sake of aesthetics. People will prefer a simple and boring web design over a visually exciting site if it’s impossible for them to navigate the website easily and go to the page they want to view. Remember that search engines want user satisfaction, and they aim to bring people as close as possible to the content they need. That said, your site’s ranking will be significantly affected by usability and readability. So, what are the things that can help improve your readability?
Choose the correct font size so users can read your content without enlarging the page. Pick a font color that will pop from the page background. So, a dark blue font is not advisable if your background is black or deep purple.Make your content easy to digest by using short paragraphs, headings, bullets, and lists. This format will make it easier for users to skim your content and find the information they want immediately.
4. Attract Mobile Users Through Responsive Design
For a website to be considered SEO-centric, it needs to incorporate responsive design. This element is essential in making your website accessible and readable in whatever device the user is using. Since different devices have different screen sizes, your website will be considered responsive if its design adjusts to whatever gadget the viewer uses to navigate your site. So, whether your viewers are accessing your site through their desktop, tablet, laptop, or mobile phone, they’ll still be able to view your site’s best version and access information quickly. Now that many people access the internet through their mobile phones, you must incorporate responsive design to tap mobile users. Provide users with a positive experience while they are on their smartphones. The only way to achieve this is through responsive design.
5. Assist Search Engines To Index Your Web Pages
With over a billion active websites, it’s logical to think that search engines have enormous keyword indexes. So, if you want your web pages to be indexed, you should help search engines find you. A surefire way to achieve that is through internal linking. Many website owners know about external links, which are hyperlinks that go to a different website. But few owners take advantage of internal hyperlinks within the same domain. So, you link one page to another page within your site. For example, you can connect your articles, images, navigation to your call-to-action web page or banner ads page.
6. Optimize Images and Videos To Enhance Your Website’s Load Time
Videos and images are fantastic to have on websites. If you are an online seller, for example, you’ll need photos and videos to showcase your products and services. However, these files are typically big on data, and they can affect your site’s loading time. Again, you need everything to be fast and seamless to encourage more people to visit and stay longer on your site. You can lose potential customers to your competitors even if your products are better just because it takes a long time to do business on your site. Remember, customers do not like to wait long. So, how can you maintain your videos and images without compromising your loading time? Check out their sizes. You can compress your files to enable improved loading. Also, curate your files. Use only the images and videos that will help sell your business or improve your traffic. You do not need to overstuff your site just for the sake of having photos and videos.
7. Always Check Your Website’s Performance
As mentioned earlier, search engines are very meticulous when it comes to ranking. They put a lot of value on user experience. For example, Google wants to maintain its dominance in the search engine arena, ensuring that the web pages it ranks high do not have broken links, have the most relevant content, and are responsive. So, performance should be on the list of priorities for SEO-centric websites. Below are some of the performance metrics that you need to check regularly:
Time to Interactive – measures how long it takes before the page becomes completely interactiveFirst Input Delay – assesses the amount of delay experienced by your users while interacting with your site. First Contentful Paint – gauges the amount of time from when the page begins loading to when a part of your page’s content becomes visually renderedLargest Contentful Paint – calculates the time from the beginning of loading to when the largest image or text block is fully rendered on screen.
8. Have An XML Sitemap
Search engines need XML sitemaps to decipher the structure of your website so they can more efficiently access your content. Moreover, the sitemap will also help search engines determine which pages on your site are most valuable. Of course, you want Google to prioritize your page where the call-to-action button is found. Sitemaps function like internal links. They both highlight to search engines the necessary pages you want them to discover and crawl. Still, it would help if you had a sitemap as a precautionary measure. You cannot be sure when your internal links may encounter problems. Having a sitemap ensures speedy content discovery every time.
Final Thoughts
Having an SEO-centric website is critical in boosting organic traffic to your website. If you need search engines to find your content, you must share and help make things easier for them. Ultimately, by embracing effective SEO practices, you improve user experience and your bottom line.
