If you’re like most people today, you probably “Google” everything. Using search engines has become an integral part of our everyday lives (hence the common phrase, “Hold on. I’ll Google it?”). With that said, it probably comes as no surprise that the majority of web traffic is driven by search engines.1
Optimizing your website for search engines can help improve the visibility of your website. This is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – an aspect of web design that aims to maximize the number of website visitors by improving a website’s ranking in search results.
What Happens When You Run a Search?
When you enter a search, search engines tap into their large database of web content to present you with results ranked by relevance. The result is known as a search engine results page (SERP).
These results will include organic and sponsored listings. Companies can purchase sponsored listings to ensure that their website will appear at the top of the search results page for specific keywords. Paid listings are also called Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads.
Search Rankings: Internal & External Factors
Search engines use algorithms based on hundreds of factors to determine these results and rankings. These algorithms look at both internal and external factors of each website. Internal factors include site structure, trustworthiness, and the relevancy of web page content to the specific search. Some external factors include backlinks, social media, and advertising.
How to Optimize Your Website for Search Engines
Based on these factors, we’ve compiled a simple checklist to help you optimize your website for search engines and improve your website’s search ranking:
1. Keywords
Make sure that your keywords and keyword phrases are relevant and utilized properly. Keywords should be related to your website’s content, your industry and/or a niche market. Finding the most relevant keywords involves extensive and ongoing keyword research.
To help you get started, there are many keyword explorers available on the internet (both free and paid). We would suggest Moz’s Keyword Explorer. Using tools like these can help you find the most relevant and popular keywords, even amongst minor spelling discrepancies (e.g., “color” or “colour” – that, turns out, search engines don’t account for).
You should place these keywords throughout your website - in page titles (or title tags), headers (or H1 tags), in images (via alt tags), and in your URL (in your domain name, sub-domain names and page names). To help you visualize this, we’ve included examples (using “Euclid Technology” as the company) below:
- Domain Name: www.EuclidTechnologykeyword.com
NOTE: if one of our keywords was “AMS” we could add it here, in place of “keyword”. We recommend only changing this when first setting up your website – or as a part of a major rebranding.
- Subdomain Name: keyword.euclidtechnology.com
- Page Name: www.euclidtechnology.com/keyword-phrase.html
- Header Tag: place keywords in H1 tags.
- Page Title: place keywords in title tags.
- Alt Img Tags: place keywords in the alt tag, following the img source link.
NOTE: Be safe and stick with 50 characters or less.
2. Aligned, Relevant & Easy to Interpret Content
With that said, it’s important to remember that your search ranking is partially based on how well you align your webpage content to the keywords, domains, and descriptions on your website. Any mixed contextual signs will make it harder for search engines to interpret and process, which may negatively impact your search ranking. To counter this, use clear, easy-to-understand language and align descriptions and keywords to specific web page content.
Bonus Tip: providing transcripts for audio and video files make it easier for search engines to pick out keywords and index content appropriately (e.g., just another way to improve that search ranking!).
3. Looking into the Eyes of the Engine
You can review your content by using tools like SEO Browser, which will highlight the content that search engines see and process on your website. By entering your website domain, this tool will return a list of your web pages and the content that search engines see on each. This includes the pages titles, descriptions, and more (including alt tags for images!). It will also give you a peek into your site structure. Since having a clear website structure and hierarchy can improve your rankings, you’ll want to take a peek at this, too!
4. Backlinks
A backlink (also known as an inbound or incoming link) is the link between two websites. Having backlinks can help validate your content. In other words, if multiple sites have a link to the same website or webpage, its search ranking will improve (because search engines will see it as worthy of putting on a SERP). The process of attaining backlinks is called link earning or link building. Link building helps your website gain “page authority”. It’s important to receive backlinks from a wide range of websites. For example, 5 links from the same website won’t be as effective as having 5 links from different websites.
Resources
- https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
- https://moz.com/learn/seo/backlinks
- https://www.techopedia.com/definition/22323/static-link
- https://blog.bayareasearchengineacademy.org/search-engine-optimization/how-to-seo-your-content-16-places-to-put-your-keyword-phrase/