Best ways to design a SEO friendly website

SEO or Search engine optimization is nowadays more important than ever. In today’s competitive market, it's necessary for every webmaster to understand the importance of SEO and its potential to create for every business.

Since the beginning of the Internet, website owners have looked for ways to reach the top of search engine rankings. At the start, this involved adding a bunch of keywords to their copy, whether they were relevant to their content or not. This strategy worked when search engines were relatively unsophisticated and there weren’t that many sites competing for attention, but now that search engines like Google have highly advanced algorithms that can make distinctions between billions of websites. Now good search engine optimization is extremely important.

All major search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo have primary search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads.

Why is SEO so important?

Search engines serve millions of users per day looking for answers to their questions or for solutions to their problems. Search engine optimization is the combination of all of the strategies you can use to help your site’s chances of appearing in search engine results. SEO is used to achieve higher search engine rankings, more traffic, and increased sales. A successful strategy takes careful planning and a dedicated time investment but can generate huge results for your company.

For example, if you sell some products or services, you want to be sure that users who type related products or services into a search engine like Google are shown your site as a result. SEO is the best way to make it happen.

Basically, SEO is used to attract search engine users who search for keywords related to your website. By attracting these users, you can get more qualified leads and make more sales, with relatively low marketing costs.

It’s not only about search engines but good SEO practices improve the user experience and usability of a website. Users trust search engines and having a presence in the top positions for the keywords the user is searching, increases the web site’s trust.

SEO can put you ahead of the competition. For example, if two websites are selling the same thing, the search engine optimized website is more likely to have more customers and make more sales.

Let's explore the ways to design a Website for SEO friendly.

SEO can also be considered as a framework since the whole process has a number of rules (or guidelines), a number of stages and a set of controls.

Geo-targeting

If your business has physical locations and your goal is to have consumers come to them (as opposed to e-commerce sites who can sell to customers all over the world), geo-targeting can be extremely useful. By including keywords related to your location, you can attract search engine users in your area.

Employ empathy

Place yourself in the mind of a user and look at your URL. If you can easily and accurately predict the content you'd expect to find on the page, your URL is appropriately descriptive. You don't need to spell out every last detail in the URL, but a rough idea is a good starting point.

Shorter is better

While a descriptive URL is important, minimizing the length and trailing slashes will make your URLs easier to copy and paste (into emails, blog posts, text messages, etc.) and will be fully visible in the search results.

Choose your keywords

When designing a search engine friendly site, carry out the research for keywords. You need to know what keywords to use on your site. Which terms are your target audiences using to search for websites like yours? Which ones will help differentiate your site from similar sites? What terms are people using now?

The answers will change over time, but you need some keywords to get started. Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner will help you determine which words and phrases users are searching for, as well as how difficult they are to rank for. The two main things to remember are competition search and the misspelling search.

Perfect placement of keywords

Place keywords in the URL. The inclusion of keywords in the URL of the website is optimal. If you have multiple words that need to be placed in the URL, then appropriately separated dashes should be used.

Embed keywords in the anchor text used to describe links, your domain name and title and Meta tags. Place your keywords as closely together as possible, while making sure your sentences remain clear. Focus on areas that register well with search engines, including bold headings, near the top of the page and at the end of the page.

Focus on areas that register well with search engines, including bold headings, near the top of the page and at the end of the page.

Use Tags

Using title tags, header tags, image alt tags, and the meta description tag correctly. Be sure to place a title tag at the top of each page to identify the document's overall content. Use your keywords in H2 and H3 tags. You should also write an accurate Meta description tag. Don't neglect to include a Meta keyword tag to reveal the most important keywords for each page to search engine spiders.

Brand building

Established brands have no trouble attracting site visitors and making sales because most consumers already know who they are and what they sell. SEO can help you build that kind of brand awareness, which will ultimately boost your site’s traffic and sales.

Get experienced team

SEO is relatively straightforward to implement but requires a substantial amount of monitoring and maintenance. If your business is small, one or two people with a solid understanding of SEO should suffice. If no one at your company is experienced with SEO, you may want to consider getting outside help. Although this may mean an additional marketing expense, an experienced team means better results.

Niche marketing

You may think that giant companies who sell a wide variety of products have an advantage with SEO because many users search for broad keywords. But while they may have a better chance of simply ranking, they also have a higher likelihood of attracting unqualified leads. For instance, let’s say you have a small business that sells men’s athletic clothing. While bigger companies may outrank you for keywords like “Men’s clothing” or “athletic clothing,” these keywords could attract visitors who aren’t necessarily interested in your products, like people who are interested in regular clothing, or persons who are interested in athletic clothing.

With SEO, you can be as specific as you want when selecting and using keywords. This means that you can market to a specific niche, which will ultimately bring in more qualified leads.

Update content regularly

This lets search engines know the content on your site isn't stale, plus it will keep your site appealing to visitors looking for the latest information.

Don't use frames

Frames, which are being used less and less, enable you to split a page into pieces and section off static content to decrease download times. However, they can cause navigation difficulties and prevent search engines from being able to access every page on your website.

Use images

Many people only optimize the text on their website, and they forget to do the same for the images they use. Apart from the logo or any other specific symbol, the text of the website should be kept away from images. The size and the placement of the image also need to be watched. Include alt text for images. If you optimize the images that you use to, you can increase your site’s search engine rank. When selecting an image for your website, make sure that it is not too large.

Create backlinks

Most major search engines rank Web pages based on the number and the quality of links that point to the Website (link popularity). They do so because it's very difficult for Webmasters to "fake" good links. As a result, link analysis gives search engines a useful means of determining which pages are good for particular topics. Creating an internal link structure, navigation, and an information architecture that helps the search engines crawl the website effectively and efficiently, and aligns with your user’s expectations.

Build responsive design

Creating a responsive website design that provides a great experience across devices. Designing a website that is visually appealing, represents your brand and has a consistent look-and-feel. Creating great content that can be used to earn inbound links during off-page optimization strategies.

Submission-required forms

If you require users to complete an online form before accessing certain content, chances are search engines will never see those protected pages. Forms can include a password-protected login or a full-blown survey. In either case, search crawlers generally will not attempt to submit forms, so any content or links that would be accessible via a form are invisible to the engines.

Off-Page Optimization

Off-page optimization refers to managing the execution of the marketing and amplification of a website. This management results in earning links and social media mentions that can increase the authority of your website, resulting in an increase in SEO rankings and traffic. Analyzing your competition to better understand what strategies they are using to rank in the search results.

Links in unparseable JavaScript

If you use JavaScript for links, you may find that search engines either do not crawl or give very little weight to the links embedded within. Standard HTML links should replace JavaScript (or accompany it) on any page you'd like crawlers to crawl. Additionally, Javascript doesn’t work particularly well on mobile devices. You want to make it as simple and easy as possible for search engines to read your website, and you want to make your site is as user-friendly as possible for your visitors.

Robots don't use search forms

Some webmasters believe if they place a search box on their site, then engines will be able to find everything that visitors search for. Unfortunately, crawlers don't perform searches to find content, leaving millions of pages inaccessible and doomed to anonymity until a crawled page links to them.

Go static

The best URLs are human-readable and without lots of parameters, numbers, and symbols. Even single dynamic parameters in a URL can result in lower overall ranking and indexing.

Integrate multiple Social Media

Search engines value social media, as do your prospective customers. Incorporating social media elements into the design of your website will help it to rank better in search engines. When designing your website, make sure that you include your social media icons and, for all of your social media accounts, such as Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook. This will not only rank your site more highly among search engines, but it will also show your potential customers that your company is personable.

Careful with Flash Elements

Using too much flash on your website cannot only be distracting for your visitors, but it can also affect your website’s search engine ranking. If you use flash elements on your site, then it will be more difficult for search engines to rank your website. This is because flash is often ignored or devalued by search engines, meaning that it won’t add anything to your site’s SEO. If you are going to use flash on your website, make sure that you do it sparingly.

Remember, before starting SEO, it’s important to know exactly what you hope to accomplish. And although “higher rankings” may be the obvious choice, you should be as specific as possible.

Do you want to rank for local terms? Do you want to attract more qualified leads? Do you want to use SEO to meet financial goals? Setting specific goals will help you assess your strategy’s success later. The majority of search engines users are more likely to click on one of the top 5 suggestions in the results pages. To take advantage of this and gain visitors to your website or customers to your online store, your website needs to appear in one of the top positions.

You can make a few simple changes to your site this week, and see how it affects your site’s search engine ranking. You can share your experiences with us in the comments below. Thank you!