recently launched a website? All that’s left to do is invite people over. You need to have a basic understanding of SEO on your website for your website to rank among the top results on search engines like Google and Bing.
There is no assurance that your website will rank #1 on Google given the sheer volume of websites available today, with 576,000 new ones being added every single day. However, there are several things you can do to improve the likelihood that your website will rank highly after appearing on Google.
10 Tips for SEO on your website
01. Choose the right URLs
You must give your website a name before it goes online. This is the address that visitors will type to find your website, also known as your domain name. It’s one of the first things people notice when they arrive at your website, similar to the huge sign over a storefront window. Because of this, it’s also the first place Google examines to determine the purpose of your site and how to rank it.
The ideal domain will include your business name and perhaps a relevant keyword or two that are relevant to your business. For example, if you are a contractor, you might want to choose a domain name.
The same holds true when selecting the appropriate URLs for each page on your website. Make sure the URL you select accurately describes the page’s content and the keyword or keywords you want it to appear for in search results, whether it’s a product page or a blog post.
If you’re a contractor, offering house painting services — make sure you include this in the slug of the URL for that page. Something like.
Pro Website SEO tip: A clean and clear URL should appear on each of your pages. No special characters, hashtags, or page IDs are allowed, thus. You see what I mean.
Once your SEO campaign has begun, you might want to consider your domain authority as well.
02. Create unique titles and descriptions for each page
Did you know that each page on your website can have a different title and description? These are concise statements that precisely and plainly outline the nature of your company’s operations. Ideally, they can include a few words and phrases sprinkled throughout.
Have you ever rolled your mouse over a browser tab? The title tag of the page is that brief sentence that appears when you hover over it. Although the description is not displayed on your page, it is crucial for search engines to comprehend the purpose of your website and individual web pages.
Pro Website SEO tip: Web users will read your site’s title and description once it appears in a search results page to discover what your site is about and to make a decision on whether or not to visit it. Optimizing for consumers is just as crucial as optimizing for search engines when it comes to increasing your SEO.
03. Utilize anchor text
Consider where you can use anchor text on your website while you compose the content for it. The clickable text on a hyperlink known as “anchor text” allows users to go directly to another web page on your website or elsewhere on the internet.
To make it easier for visitors to explore your website and locate what they are looking for, employ effective anchor text. Incorporate terms and phrases that are pertinent to what you do as well. For instance, if you own a t-shirt printing company, the phrase “Check out our selection of print-on-demand t-shirts” on your site can act as an anchor text link to your online store, which is packed with t-shirts, as you might have predicted.
Pro Website SEO tip: Although anchor text is a terrific approach to improve your SEO, you should be aware that excessive linking or anchors that don’t actually benefit your users may cause Google to raise some red flags.
04. Add alt text to all your images
Search engines seek “alt text,” a brief written explanation (no more than a few words) for each picture on a website, to comprehend what is displayed in a photo or graphic. When describing a picture in the alt text, make careful to be truthful but also attempt to add the name of your company or a few keywords associated with what you do.
Pro Website SEO tip: Images that are solely utilitarian or design-related, such as a background image that is just shaped, don’t require alt text. You can omit the alt text if the image has nothing to do with the subject of your website.
05. Give your site structure with the right headers
Your website should contain titles, subtitles, and other headings for each page. If you are employing the proper text structure, search engines will comprehend your material more clearly when they crawl your page. Your page’s title, which you should designate as H1 (in the Text’s Editor), is the most pertinent section.
There shouldn’t be more than one H1 on a page, and it should describe the page’s content. Make sure to carefully select your title and don’t forget to use your primary keywords. In the hierarchy of headers, your H1 is followed by H2, H3, etc. H2 and H3 correspond to your headings and subheadings, respectively, while H1 refers to your title.
Pro Website SEO tip: The clearer your text structure is, the easier search engines will digest your site’s content.
06. Create quality content
One strategy to boost your SEO and have more pages of your site rank for more search phrases is by producing excellent content. Making ensuring your homepage, product pages, and other site pages comply with Google’s E-A-T may be enough for many firms, but it may also just mean having a blog as part of your SEO plan and larger marketing strategies.
Google included the E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) concept in their Search Quality Rater rules in the wake of their Medic update in 2018. It’s unclear how Google evaluates websites for E-A-T and is unlikely to ever be. However, if you want your information to be found online, you must ensure that it is credible, that you can back up your claims, and that consumers can rely on it to guide their decisions.
Pro Website SEO tip: Wherever you can get specialists to produce your content. For example, if you’re writing about business, make sure you at least obtain a business expert to contribute to your piece.
07. Do keyword research
Without using keywords as your focus, your website cannot rank. Every SEO improvement you make to a page, including the H1 tag selection, the meta title, and the URL slug, must have a target keyword or keywords in mind.
Want a page to get ranked? It requires one or more target keywords. Tools for keyword research come in quite handy in this situation. There is no need to get your keyword research wrong when there are simple, free tools that can show you keyword trends over time and expensive, comprehensive tools that let you choose phrases to target based on purpose, competitiveness, and potential traffic.
Choosing the appropriate keyword is crucial for ranking as well as for how people perceive and see your brand. The intent behind the term should be one of your first considerations when selecting a keyword to target. What does Google presume users are seeking when they use this keyword in their searches? Someone searching for “SEO tips,” for instance, is seeking educational content, like a blog article. Therefore, writing a blog entry is your best bet when aiming for that term.
On the other hand, search engines presume that someone looking for an “SEO agency” is looking for a service or product page from an SEO business. The goal is to make money. A blog article won’t rank here, so don’t do it.
You may learn more about a keyword’s competitiveness by conducting keyword research. Even if your preliminary study indicates that it has blog intent, examine more closely the blogs that are ranking for it. You can presume this is a possibly competitive SERP to rank in if they are well-established blogs with a history of ranking, numerous pages of material, and a big brand name behind them. Although there are many David and Goliath stories and nothing is impossible in the realm of SEO, you shouldn’t chase after SERPs where your content might never rank due to competition.
Pro Website SEO tip: By selecting the best keyword research tool, you may strengthen your competitor analysis in addition to helping with keyword research. If you’re searching for tools to begin start with, we recommend Semrush and Ahrefs. Additionally, you can use them to conduct local SEO research.
08. Prioritize proactive indexing
The next step is to make sure your site’s priority pages are indexed after your site can be indexed (after you’ve linked it to Google Search Console and uploaded your sitemap to the search engine). There are more websites and pages on the internet than anyone could possibly count. If you want search engines to index your priority pages, you must take certain steps to let them know exactly which pages are most crucial.
There are various methods for doing this. This first entails excluding pages in robots.txt that you don’t want Google to crawl because you don’t want them to rank, according to Crystal Carter, Head of SEO Communications. Low-value pages, landing and campaign pages, duplicate tag and category pages, or customer order pages might all fall under this category. This eliminates them from the situation and makes it clear to Google which pages to crawl.
Utilizing your social profile links is another aspect of this, whether it is through the automatic sharing of material from your website on social platforms, claiming local citations, or signing up for online directories.
Making sure your internal linking strategy is effective will also help your overall site rank higher. Internal linking aids search engines in navigating your website because it points them to your most crucial pages and helps them comprehend not only your site’s hierarchy but also possible user movement. According to theory, the more this is evident, the better Google, for instance, comprehends not only your site but also your strategy and the better it knows where to place and rank your material.
Making pillar pages that sit at the top of a topic you want to rank for and linking out internally to other pages on your site that target other aspects of the same subject is one method to achieve this with blog material, for instance. A pillar page on marketing methods, for instance, might then link to articles on numerous other marketing strategies.
Pro Website SEO tip: Make sure your website surfaces the appropriate content so that both people and search engines understand what it is. Depending on the scale of your site, this can be challenging, but if done correctly, it can have a huge impact on your organic growth.
09. Build impactful external links
Outside links are important. significant domain backlinks of the highest caliber are a significant indicator to Google that your content is worthy of being ranked. Consider it a recommendation for your website, which Google will see and perhaps reward you for.
It takes a lot of outreach on your behalf to convince reputable sources to promote and disseminate your material in order to obtain quality backlinks, which are difficult to come by. You’ll need to win over the confidence of credible PR sources or periodicals.
Pro Website SEO tip: Original content is more likely to be shareable, and more likely to be picked up and gain reputable backlinks.
10. Track, report, and improve
That SEO is a marathon, not a sprint, is arguably the best SEO advice we can offer. Successes frequently come as a result of several months of diligent labor, regular content updates, and optimizations while enhancing internal linking and making technical SEO adjustments.
Tracking rankings and organic traffic must be an essential component of your SEO reporting workflow if you want to ensure that your efforts are paying off and demonstrate how you are meeting your KPIs.
To achieve this, make your best friends the essential online analytics tools Google Search Console, Google Analytics (soon to be GA4), Analytics, and other different term tracking tools.
You may use these tools to determine whether you’re ranked for your target keywords (or other keywords as well), as well as how much traffic you’re getting as a result of your rankings. Additionally, you’ll be able to observe and respond to changes in traffic rankings, the disappearance of SERP features, and any resulting declines in organic traffic. Drops and declines may indicate that a page needs to be properly optimized, its content updated, or you need to address whether the SERP intent for that specific target phrase has changed.
Pro Website SEO tip: Be prepared to act quickly to ranking and traffic drops, be alert to Google Algorithm updates, and plan accordingly.
