10 Search Engine Optimization Techniques That the Best Website Designers Use

Search engine optimization or, SEO, is the method used to construct webpages, and entire websites, so that they can be discovered, analyzed, and indexed by various search engines. The best website designers know that this is of great importance because if customers can’t find your site in search engines when they search specific keywords and phrases, then the traffic to your website will be extremely low which will result in the sales from your site being low as well.

Even if you have a great website design, potential customers still won’t be able to find your site without the proper SEO. Search engine users type in a search term and hit enter. The search engine pulls up all the top results for the keyword that was searched for. The user is likely to visit the first few results on the page, perhaps even all the results of the first page, they might scan the second page of results to see if anything relevant was found but after that they are likely to settle on something they have already found or perform another search. Users are not likely to click past the first couple of pages of results.

So, how do you get your site in the top rankings of search engines? It takes work, and that work is called SEO. You need to make your website appealing to visitors as well as to search engines. A well optimized site will rank better in the search engines and will target more visitors.

Here are 10 search engine optimization techniques to try:

1. Title tags

Title tags play an important part in indexing your webpage. The page’s title is the first thing the search engine looks at when determining what a specific page is about. It is also the first thing visitors see when they view the search engine listings. The title tag lets visitors know what your webpage is about and should tell them if the information they are looking for will be on this page. The title tag should be no more than 70 characters and should include 1 or 2 keywords.

2. Meta tags

Meta tags include the description and keywords for the webpage. Search engines don’t seem to care as much about the meta description as they once did, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. The description is listed in the search results so it is important in convincing a searcher to choose your site over another one. The description should be about 150 characters and should contain a couple of keywords as well. The description should read like a sentence, not a list. Your keyword list should have words that you think people will type to find that specific webpage.

3. Headline tags, or Heading tags (H1, H2, H3 tags)

Headlines show what a page is about, help to break up the page content, and help visitors find what they are looking for more easily. Headlines are a good place to put targeted keywords. They also show a search engine what topics your page is about and help to get your page indexed properly.

4. Image tags

Image tags are a brief description of the image you are putting on the page. It becomes relevant text that search engines will be able to read when indexing your site, search engine spiders can’t see images so the text will let them know what the image is.

5. Link tags

The links within your webpage should have tags, or title attributes, as well. When you hover over a link a “tool tip” will frequently pop up. The tag should tell the site visitor where the link will take them. Instead of simply saying “Click Here” your link tag should contain a relevant keyword. This will add value to the link and will tell the search engine why the resulting page is relevant to the search.

6. XML sitemap

An XML sitemap lists all of the pages or posts on your website, it includes information about the date the page was last modified and the index of what you think are the most important pages of the site. These sitemaps help a search engine find and link to all of the content on your site, properly indexing it.

7. Content

Relevant, up-to-date page content is one of the most important factors in a website’s SEO success. Search engine spiders read the content of the page to determine if it matches a searchers query. The content on the page should be written naturally and should be easy for a person to read and should make sense. The content should again contain the targeted keywords for the page but should not be too spammy or keyword stuffed.

8. URL structure

Each page of a website should have a URL makes sense to a human, that describes the page and contains a few keywords. A short URL is easier to remember and is preferable to a URL that is long and dragged out with odd sequences of numbers and letters.

9. Links

A site’s page rank is determined, in part, by the number of links pointing to your website. Reputable link directories are good places to submit your website to get links. Specific blog articles and social media are other good places to gain links. The more quality links you gain the more you will see your page rank going up.

10. Commit yourself to being a student of SEO and the process

SEO isn’t a one time event. It is a constant endeavor that is always changing and evolving. Learn as much as you can by staying up to date on the latest SEO news by reading blogs and participating in the SEO community. SEO requires a long term commitment, results are not immediate so remain steadfast and patient.