Search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) are continuously improving upon their approach (algorithm) to provide their users with the best results (answers) that can be as close as possible to their search queries (questions). Here, SEO comes into play that focuses on optimizations to make SEO-friendly websites that are useful for the users as well.
Many people consider SEO (search engine optimization) as a technique of manipulating search engines to rank a particular website higher up in search results. But, the reality is altogether different as the main aim of SEO is as follows.
- To optimize your website for enriched user experience.
- Providing your website to the search engines for consideration.
Let’s look into the most useful SEO optimization tips to optimize your website for better user experience.
How to Optimize Your Website for SEO? – 8 SEO optimization tips
1. Write Useful & Quality Content
This is the evergreen law that is the core of SEO optimization tips. Search engines are very fond of fresh and unique content that is useful, informational and educational to the users. Even users also tend to engage with quality and grammatically correct content that solves their problems or answers their questions. You can check your grammar mistakes with the help of this free grammar checker tool.
So, you must focus on publishing high-quality content on your website or blog. Diversify your content and make it more engaging by mixing textual content with visual content. Images, videos, infographics, and slideshows are more engaging and sharable among users.
2. Focus on Keyword Placement & Density
Keywords are the driving force of search engines. And, the search engines give due priority to the placement and density of keywords on your website. Proper placement of keywords in the proper amount is necessary to let the search engines know that your website is relevant to this keyword.
Try to optimize your website for a maximum of 5 different keywords. Also, make sure that they are present at the right places – title, introduction, ending and at some instances in the middle part of the webpage.
The keyword density on a webpage should not be more than 3.5% and less than 2.5% as exceeding this limit would be considered as keyword stuffing and may even be penalized, and anything less than this might not get your website discovered by the search engines.
3. Use Proper Meta Tags
Use of proper meta tags (meta title and meta description) is very critical from the SEO point of view. As it conveys about the content of your website to both the search engine and the user. Proper meta tags will bring your website on top of search results and thereby compel the user to click on it.
Only use alphanumeric characters, commas and hyphens in your website meta, as all other special characters are unreadable to the search engines. Also, use separate and unique meta tags for separate webpages.
4. Use Correct Image Meta attributes
Also, make sure that you use meta attributes for all images on your website as well. This will covey some information about the images to the search engines and also let these images be found in image searches.
5. Use Keywords as Anchor Text & Link Title
This is also a very important part of SEO optimization tips – the meticulous selection of the anchor text for hyperlinks. Search engines consider the anchor text to be the short description of the destination URL. Also, add the link title to covey additional information about your webpage.
So, make sure that the links to your website are hyperlinked on proper anchor text with a descriptive title.
6. Get Backlinks from Trusted Websites
Backlinks from other websites show that your website is credible and highly authoritative. This is further boosted when your website gets backlinks from trusted websites in your niche. To get backlinks from high rated websites, you have to publish very useful content.
Share your posts on social media platforms to increase their visibility. Use forum posting and commenting on relevant sites with a backlink to your website.
Let the backlinks build in a natural way and always refrain from purchasing backlinks, as this is considered as negative practice and your website may be penalized for this.
7. Optimize Domain Name & Other URLs
Having an SEO optimized domain name for your website is very much advantageous and results in great SEO benefits. Keep the following rules in mind while selecting a domain name for your website.
- Maintain consistency with domain names – Make sure that both www.yourdomainname.com and yourdomainname.com point to the same website, by redirecting the latter to the former. Otherwise, search engines will see two different websites and that will undermine your SEO efforts.
- Get an Old Domain Name – The domain age matters in SEO, so it would be very much beneficial if you can get an old domain (premium domain name) that has been around for quite some time. But, do verify that the domain was not misused by its previous owner so that your website does not get penalized.
- Use Sub-Directory Root Domain Names – Naming your webpages using sub-directory root domains (www.yourdomainname.com/new-page) is much better as compared to sub-domains (newpage.yourdomainname.com). And, it also provides a much better opportunity to optimize the URLs.
- Use a keyword in your URLs – Search engines give priority to websites having related keywords in their domain name and other URLs. Try to get a keyword specific domain name and include page-specific keywords in the sub-directories.
8. Try to Make Website Navigation Easy
What is website optimization? A website that is easy to navigate not only guides a search engine to crawl and read all your website pages, but also creates a great user experience. Use the following best practices to optimize your website for easy navigation.
1. Every page on your website must be accessible from any other page in a maximum of four clicks.
2. Use the “no follow” tag for external links so that search engines can crawl your website thoroughly.
3. Use text for linking (anchor text), instead of images.
4. Make sure all links on your website are working properly, and there is no broken link.
5. Create two separate sitemaps for your website (XML & HTML).
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- Submit the XML sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools, and this will assist search engines in finding each and every page of your website. You can generate an XML sitemap using a sitemap generator tool.
- The HTML sitemap is for the users and it contains a link to all your webpages and it helps to find the exact page that the user is looking for.
- Submit the XML sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools, and this will assist search engines in finding each and every page of your website. You can generate an XML sitemap using a sitemap generator tool.
You can use SEO Centro to determine the areas of improvement for SEO on your website know more on how to optimize website speed?
The above-mentioned tips are the basics of SEO optimization. On proper implementation of these tips, your website will have a solid foundation of SEO. Since SEO is a continuous process, keep your website updated for search engines by optimizing it with these basic rules.
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If you have any query or want to know more on – how to optimize your website for SEO do share your thoughts in the comments section below.
These tips are really helpful for optimizing the website for SEO. Thank you for the sharing the tips.
Nice article!! thanks for sharing awesome information. This article is really helpful for me to SEO.
Good blog post Pawan! Thanks for sharing valuable tips.