A Kick-Ass Guide to Building an Awesome Website

A Kick-Ass Guide to Building an Awesome Website
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“SEO IS ALL ABOUT BEING EFFICIENT IN THE WAY
THAT GOOGLE VIEWS YOUR WEB PAGES.”
Many business owners are in such a hurry
for their websites to go live that they
completely ignore SEO, or search engine
optimization, only thinking about it once
they realize that their site is not generating
enough traffic. It is important to consider
SEO through the entire process in order to
start building your search engine rankings
from the start.
Do You Have Enough Copy?
SEO is about much more than simply
throwing a few keywords around. Google,
the search engine industry leader, looks at
many, many factors when ranking websites.
One of these signals is the actual amount of
copy that your website contains. Although
you do not want to overwhelm your
visitors with an awkward amount of text
on the landing or home pages, your inner
pages need to contain enough text to be
informative.
Did You Tag Your Images?
When you add your images to your website,
make sure that the tags are relevant. Aside
from simply scanning the text on your
site for relevant keywords, Google and
other search engines will also take into
account the tags for your images and their
relevancy. As an example, if you run a pet
grooming business, one of your keywords
may be “dog shampooing”. You may choose
an image of a cute, sudsy puppy, and while
it certainly fits the context, you need to tag
that photo with your chosen keyword in
order for Google to deem it relevant.
Is Your Site Slow?
Something else to consider when it comes
to SEO is how long it takes your site to load.
Google places a lot of value on the overall
user experience these days, so if people
have to wait for 20 seconds for your site to fully
load, their satisfaction level goes downhill. Make
sure that the pages on your site load in under five
seconds for the best results, even if you have to
limit the number of banner ads you place.
Is Your Site Mobile-Friendly?
Mobile friendliness is another huge factor in
SEO these days. After all, being able to view your
webpage clearly on a variety of devices adds to
the overall user experience. If someone can view
your site at home on their computer without
a problem, but has an issue trying to find that
same information when browsing your site from
a mobile phone, you may lose that visitor to a
competitor with a mobile-optimized site. Google
tracks this information, and it may reflect poorly
on your site.
Did You Choose the Right
Keywords?
No matter what sort of business you run, and
regardless of its industry, you have to think of
it from the consumer’s point of view in order
to choose the right keywords. In fact, the best
way to choose keywords is to ask yourself what
you would type into Google’s search bar to find
the information that you want to provide. For
example, if you run a pest control company and
you want to give people advice, think about what
people will ask most often. Keywords like “how
to get rid of roaches” and “best mousetrap”
are excellent choices. Be sure to tailor these
keywords to your content, too.
When many people think of SEO, they think of
cramming their text with keywords, and in all
actuality, many people think of SEO too late
in the game. However, SEO is about many,
many different things, all of which relate to
the user experience. For the best results, you
need to consider search engine optimization in
everything you do, right from the very start.
Learn more about SEO here.