In today's digital marketing era, it's crucial to optimize your website according to search engine ranking algorithms to attract traffic. Organic searches make up a significant 53.3% of website traffic. This demonstrates the importance of having an SEO-friendly website, which helps reach the target audience more effectively. To increase website traffic and achieve desired marketing goals, it's important to focus on using the latest marketing trends in the optimization strategy to enhance website visibility. In this blog, we'll discuss essential strategies to make an SEO-friendly website that helps increase website traffic, enhance conversion rate, etc.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization(SEO) is a process of optimizing a website according to the search engine algorithms to increase the website's organic traffic visibility. As Google is the most popular search engine, SEO marketers must make their website SEO-friendly to ensure increased website traffic for the user's search query. With nearly 2 trillion searches being performed on Google every year, it provides a wide range of opportunities for marketers to drive organic traffic to the website.
Types of SEO
SEO is an important factor in the contribution of website traffic. There are different types of SEO that you need to know to build a strong website presence. These are:-
1. On-page SEO - On-page SEO, also known as on-site SEO, is the process through which the contents of a web page are optimized for users and search engines. This includes optimization of title tags,optimization of content, internal links, keyword optimization, schema markup, etc.
2. Off- page SEO - Off-page SEO refers to efforts made outside a website to improve search engine ranking. It is used to boost website authority and trustworthiness. This includes link building, social media marketing, guest posting, and maintaining public relations (PR).
Ensure website is crawlable and indexable
SEO ranking of a website refers to the position of a webpage on search engine result pages (SERPs) for a given search query. If your webpage ranks higher on search results, then the website visibility increases, which ultimately helps in increasing organic traffic. The more number of users visiting the webpage the higher are the chances of visitors converting to customers. The goal of SEO is to improve a website's search engine ranking, which drives relevant traffic to the business's products or services.
Before ranking your webpage, a search engine needs to discover them first. So, here are some of the vital points that an SEO-friendly website must have.
1. Crawling - In this process, search engines send out a team of robots known as search engine spiders or crawlers. They go from one page to another to find content on your website, which could be in the form of images, text, video, etc.
2. Indexing - After crawling, search engine spiders store information in their database. It makes it easier for the search engines to display the relevant page for the users search query.
3. Ranking - When search engine crawlers can identify a relevant page and index it to store the necessary information, it displays the desired page for the user's search query. To rank a website on search engines, a website must have proper SEO implemented in sync with search ranking algorithms to ensure that the website ranks high on the SERPs. It also helps gain user trust on the business, build brand awareness and helps in customer acquisition.
Why do we need SEO?
A. To increase ranking of website - Website ranking plays an essential role in the promotion of online business. By doing SEO, you can promote your products and services when a user tries to find them online. It is an effective way to promote the credibility and authority of your brand.
B. No money to be paid to search engines - Paid ads such as search ads, video ads, display ads, and mobile ads are very effective methods of PPC advertising to to achieve online advertising goals. However they are relatively costlier than SEO. In paid ads, we need to pay search engines or online platforms a certain bid amount. However, in search engine optimization we have organic traffic to the website. By following correct techniques and practices, your website appears at the top of search engine ranking pages to drive customers and improve your marketing strategy.
C. Keep pace with competitors - Every business has competitors, and SEO helps in used practices and methods to stay ahead of your competitors. By regularly performing competition analysis, you can analyze your competitor's strengths & weaknesses and implement essential techniques to stay ahead of them.
Steps to make website SEO friendly
I. Designing website structure - The structure of a website refers to the organization and interconnection of content on your website. A website contains different types of content in the form of blogs, posts, pages, etc; it is important to optimize the SEO of a website to improve the search engine ranking of a page(SERP). Designing user-friendly websites can improve your experience when they try to navigate through the website to find their intent. You can also avail of white label web development services to design your website according to SEO requirements.
II. Creating XML sitemap - XML stands for extensible markup language. A good XML sitemap acts as a map of your website. It lists all important web pages, ensuring search engine crawlers find and index them so that your website appears on the result page for the users search query. Apart from that, a sitemap also updates search engines regarding new information being made to the website so that search engines can index the website again. If your website has more than 500 indexable URLs, it is advisable to create a sitemap so that users, as well as web crawlers, can navigate throughout your website to find the information. You can use the XML sitemap generator tool to create a sitemap for your website.
There are different types of sitemaps, such as image sitemaps, video sitemaps, and mobile sitemaps, but HTML sitemap and XML sitemaps are most important for websites. An HTML sitemap is a file that lists all the pages of a website so that a user can navigate easily when they are looking for information.
III. Creating robots.txt files - A robots.txt file is an instruction given by websites on whether to crawl or not crawl a particular page. Crawl budget refers to the total number of web pages a search engine bot will crawl in a given time frame. If your website has multiple pages that are not linked to the website, it will not rank on the website. Using robots.txt file to block unnecessary pages can help in the optimal utilization of the crawl budget. It is also useful in blocking duplicate content as well as sensitive information such as customers' phone numbers, banking details, etc., which can appear on the website.
IV. Building backlinks - Backlinks, also known as incoming links, are those links that link one website or one webpage to another. These links are made up of HTML language, which is used to markup text on your website. Backlinks are essential because search engines see them as a recommendation. Pages with the highest number of backlinks rank at the top of search engine results pages.
Adding backlinks can be a very effective link-building SEO strategy that can help in increasing the search engine ranking of a page(SERP) because it helps search engine bots crawl and index the content of your website. According to Google, it is one of the most crucial website ranking factors. Ahref's backlink checker is a free tool that helps you check other websites' backlinks. You can also outsource backlink analysis to boost your website's SEO ranking.
V. Meta tags & meta description optimization - Meta tags are HTML tags used to provide the title of the content on the website. Meta tags are generally used in the head section of an HTML page. It is one of the main elements that helps search engine bots show the content on the search result page if it is relevant. It is one of the critical SEO strategies that can help your website appear at the top of the search result page and increase your website's click-through rate (CTR).
A meta description is the summary of page content. It gives brief information about the content that appears on the search result page. A meta description, also known as a title tag, and contains around 155 characters. Creating a compelling meta description is essential to drive website traffic.
6. Mobile optimization of website - It is crucial to optimize the website according to mobile SEO to make it SEO-friendly. Mobile SEO refers to the optimization of website layout according to smartphones. According to Google, over 50% of traffic comes from mobile searches. This means that a website should be designed according to mobile to increase SEO performance. Some of the techniques that are used for mobile SEO are meta tag optimization, page loading speed, creating mobile URLs, etc. Since mobile is available to almost everyone around the globe, creating a website structure according to mobile can give you a competitive advantage over other brands, which can help drive more traffic for conversion and high revenue.
7. Content on website - Content is a crucial factor in increasing website SEO. It helps to increase website visibility, engage with existing customers, and drive traffic to increase conversion rates. When you create content consistently, Google recognizes your website's credibility and makes it appear that somebody has the same search intent as your website expertise.
Content marketing is a marketing strategy to engage, retain, and attract customers to buy your product and services. Using this strategy, you can improve your brand authority and visibility in the market. It is a very effective strategy to promote your brand on search engines as well as on social media platforms such as Instagram platform, Facebook platform, X formally Twitter, etc. You can also hire a digital marketing company and hire content specialists to enhance your content marketing strategy and boost marketing ROI.
8. Image and video optimization - Images and videos are powerful tools to attract and engage audiences while also improving your website's SEO performance. Choosing the right format for your content, optimizing file sizes, and adding relevant metadata are all effective ways to increase your website's ranking and improve user experience. By using these methods, you can effectively promote your products and services and establish a strong brand authority in the market.
9. Page loading speed - Page loading speed refers to the time taken by a web page to open when a user clicks on the URL of the page. It is an important factor for making websites that are SEO-friendly and rank well on Google. You can use the free tool, PageSpeed Insight, to check the webpage speed. Regularly checking core web vitals through a/b testing and other methods can help you understand the factors that are contributing to your website’s slow speed. Improving your website speed is essential to provide a better page experience for customers and allow search engine crawlers to crawl your website and find content easily.
10. Keyword optimization for content - One of the most crucial aspects of website SEO is keyword optimization. Writing content that is SEO-friendly requires conducting keyword research based on factors like location, user intent, and business intent. For example, if you own a business that sells beauty and lifestyle products and you want to increase your online presence, it's important to research keywords that are relevant to your location and what your users are looking for. This way, when you use these keywords in your content, your website will appear when someone has a similar intent. Our blog, A Guide to Keyword Research, provides valuable insights on how to conduct keyword research to enhance your website's SEO performance.
Conclusion
SEO-friendly websites get high traffic and high rankings on SERP. Therefore, following these strategies can help you increase your website ranking and build a brand with a strong market presence. If you find creating an SEO friendly website a tough task to perform, you can consider outsourcing SEO services to a digital marketing agency. By utilizing white label SEO services, you can hire SEO professionals with expertise in SEO audit, SEO report, video SEO, SEO analytics, and more, who can help you improve your website's performance.
References:
. SEO and website design: How to build search engine-friendly sites
. How to create an SEO-friendly website: The complete checklist