The online world today is highly competitive. That is why adopting SEO-friendly techniques when writing your content is extremely important. Unlike during the initial days when creating longer pieces with potentially low-value content and hoping for ranking.
The competitive online world today needs you to create webpages that grab the attention of Google and make it rank your pages higher. With that knowledge, I decided to present the 9 tried and tested tips to help you develop SEO friendly website that ranks on Google. And believe me, these tips actually work. I have been using them for my own online endeavors and found them doing great.
Why is it important to have SEO-friendly website design?
Obviously, a website that has an SEO-friendly design tends to get more traffic from search engines. Though of course, you should also keep your users in mind when creating the content in addition to the search engines. Once you master this essential skill of SEO Web Development, you are bound to perform better than your competitors.
The primary reasons you need to have an SEO-friendly design can include.
It helps you get more organic traffic – Organic traffic refers to the traffic from search engines. If you have an SEO-friendly design, it is bound to attract more traffic as search engines tend to notice the site with the best design than the one which ignores it.
It provides user-friendly navigation to your website – This is an essential factor and helps your users be able to navigate through your site quickly enough.
It offers credibility to your brand – The brand credibility provided by the SEO-friendly website is another incentive that enhances the value of your website.
9 Tips to Develop an SEO-friendly Website
Having understood why you should have an SEO-friendly design on your website, let us check out a few high-value tips that help you rank better in search engines like Google.
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Include target keywords throughout the article
Optimizing the content in tune with the search intent is the key to achieving better prospects of ranking better. Including the target keywords all through the post assures that the search engines tend to display the content for the relevant search queries.
Irrespective of several algorithms and updates, search engines are primarily dependent on keywords, and that is why adding relevant keywords has always been the WIN word for ranking better. But make sure that the keywords are applied naturally and strategically. Do remember that Google penalizes keyword stuffing which is a practice of adding keywords without any focus on the content around these keywords.
Pay good attention to readability when including keywords. The key is to use the right keywords in the right space in the right context.
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Use proper header tags and meta description
Header tags help your content to be recognized by search engines. Optimizing the header tags will let you get benefits in ranking really well. The headlines should have the correct header tag. As you can see, the title tag of this page has the H1 tag, while the subheadings have the H3 tag.
Optimizing the header tags involves using relevant keywords inside your title tags. It will be a good idea to add the primary keyword in the title tag. Other keywords can be incorporated strategically into the different header tags. Proper optimization of the header tags will help search engines get the right context for your content. Make sure that the content that follows the header tags stays in context with the keywords used, else you are likely to get penalized.
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Write structured content with short paragraphs
Structured content involves making your content more readable. SEO optimization consists of a lot of tasks and techniques, and in the end, you will fail to notice how your content looks. The content you create is for your users, and Google places a lot of essence on user satisfaction. Having content that has an unappealing look despite having value will not bring any traffic to you.
Imagine a page that has a lot of great information but looks like a vast block of text. You are most likely to move away from it. The better-structured and easy-to-read pages are likely to attract more users than a piece of content that is haphazardly presented despite having complete and factual information. Use short sentences and short paragraphs to make the content readable. Include subheadings, bulleted lists, and similar other techniques to make the content look easier to read.
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Use clean SEO-friendly URLs
An URL crafted well is the key to achieving a better ranking. An SEO-friendly URL refers to one that is contextual to your keywords and search intent, simple to understand, and easy to follow. Make sure to include the primary keyword in the URL but avoid making it too long.
Avoid using numbers in your URL. While using numbers in title tags and headlines is a positive SEO practice, using them in the URL can negatively affect your website traffic. The URL is the gateway that the search engine utilizes for accessing and crawling your website, and thus, it is essential to focus on using a cleaner URL structure.
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Optimize the images
Images make your website look great, but from the SEO point of view, it is much essential to optimize the images. The visual content, such as images and videos, tends to slow down your page speed. In fact, I consider the images and similar content to be a double-edged sword. You need to use them cautiously and in the right way to reap the benefits of a better ranking.
The image optimization techniques include.
- Using a proper and understandable file name
- The alt text is in tune with your keywords. Use at least one relevant image with the primary keyword.
- Reduced file size for the images to make them load faster.
Compressing the images without losing their quality is the proper technique to implement. I would suggest using the image optimizer plugins such as Smush or EWWW Image Optimiser.
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Make the website mobile friendly
Make sure that your website is optimized for the mobile operating system. Most of the searchers today use smartphones to access website content. That is what makes the mobile-friendliness of your website one of the prerequisites for better ranking. And Grace Themes already have SEO-optimized website themes, so check them out!
It is stated that close to 60% of website traffic came from mobiles in 2022, and this is what makes making websites mobile-friendly and one of the most essential ranking parameters to take care of. Having a responsive web design is one of the best options to help you improve the mobile-friendliness of your website.One of the key strategies in making your website mobile friendly is to use a responsive theme for your site. Most of the website themes available today offer a better mobile-friendly interface and functionality. Using one with the best performance can help you achieve better results.
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Use efficient internal linking
Internal linking is a great way to improve your ranking. If you already have content that ranks well on search engines, link to your other pages from the page. An effective internal link helps the search engines to understand the overall content on your website and how they are related to one another.
Internal linking is also an excellent means to help search engines to the other relevant and valuable content on your webpage. Yet another advantage that you stand to gain with the internal links is that it enables you to pass the authority between different pages. That is precisely why I recommend using authoritative links from one to another.
A Pro tip – I would also recommend using external links to authoritative websites. This will further help you establish the authenticity of your website.
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Promote the content on social media
The social media platform comes with considerable potential for promoting your content. Social media can help you reach a vast audience and can also help you in getting better prospects of backlinking. The power of backlinks cannot be ignored when ranking your websites, and search engines pay a lot of attention to quality backlinks.
Make sure to add referral links and CTA (call to action) to your posts on social media. This will help you in driving more traffic to your website. It is pretty essential to focus on the right social media services to promote your content. It has been observed that Instagram, for instance, helps you better if you are in a fashion-related service.
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Update the content regularly
Even when you may have created quality content, it is most likely to go unnoticed after a while. If your website has some engaging content that has been consistently garnering good traffic, it is always a good idea to update the content with additional relevant information. Instead of creating new content, updating the existing content can be much easy to get more traffic. With the old content already indexed and having some traffic, it is a wiser option to update it.
Google prefers sites that keep offering new content at regular intervals. If you do not publish new content regularly, your blog may not be considered a regular resource. Publishing or updating the content once or twice per week may be a good option. One of the best ways to update your content is to respond to the comments.
The Closing Thoughts
Understanding how to improve your rankings on your website may be a little time-consuming process. Even the actions you take may take a while to show the results. But, if you do it right, these tips can help you get fruitful results.
The tips above are pretty practical and do not need you to indulge in any specific skill enhancement courses. Follow those tips and reap the benefits.