There are two types of search engine optimization, on-site and off-site. On-site SEO techniques are things you can do on your website to help search engines take notice. The good thing about on-site SEO is that you control it; Off-site optimization is much harder to pin down. When updating the look of a website, keep the following on-site SEO tips in mind:
fresh content
When search engine spiders crawl your website, they report back to the search engine with information about your site, keywords, images, etc. Sites like Google and Yahoo like it when spiders bring up new information. When a site is out of date and spiders continually bring up the same information, they are not happy.
With the latest updates from Google, it’s even more important than ever to have up-to-date content on your website. Fresh content is now key to ranking well in search engines. Not only new content is important, but also unique content. Search engines are getting tougher on duplicate content. Copying and pasting old content on your blog or website will not help you, in fact, it could harm your site. Keeping content fresh and unique is one of the important elements of on-site SEO.
Goaltags
Use meta tags for titles, descriptions, keywords, author, as well as images and graphics, and should contain specific keywords and phrases.
header tags
Heading tags are used to break up the text. They make it easier for the reader to find the information they are looking for and are used by search engines to gather information about a web page. Keywords should be used in the header so that search engine spiders know exactly what the topic is.
Keywords
Keywords should be used in all of your meta tags and headers, but they should also be used in your website content. Keywords should be used naturally in the flow of the paragraph so that the content makes sense to the reader. Pages that have more than 10% of the words that are keywords or keyword phrases will hurt your rankings instead of helping them. You don’t want to fill your page with keywords, this makes it hard for a reader to understand what you’re saying and search engines don’t like it.
internal link
Just as there are two types of SEO, there are two types of links, onsite and offsite. Linking on the site is called internal linking and links from your domain to another place on your domain. Internal linking should be done not only in navigation but also in page content. When linking from within content, use keywords as the anchor text for the link. This will further help search engines to index your site correctly for search rankings. Remember to use internal links sparingly in the text. Too many links will reduce the link value each page receives.
Site Map
An XML sitemap should be located at the bottom of your site. This will allow search engine spiders to easily index your pages and will allow visitors to more easily navigate the pages. You can also send this file to Google.
url
The structure of a URL plays an important role in SEO. The URL is usually made up of seemingly random numbers and characters. To allow the URL to make more sense and be more visible to site visitors, keywords must be used in the URL. These keyword-rich URLs are also preferred by search engines. A short URL that does not have hyphens or hyphens is easier to remember and performs better in search engines.
The best website designs are visually appealing while incorporating all of these SEO techniques on the site. SEO strategies will help the user find your site more easily and find the information they are looking for at a glance, decreasing the bounce rate and increasing your conversion rate.