Creating a website requires a lot of knowledge. It is not as easy as just creating a website. With a good 53% share of website traffic, search engine optimization has become one of the biggest and most commonly chosen digital marketing channels. It is the first requirement for marketers and business owners who would like to create their online visibility and domination.
One of the most amazing things about SEO is that it has the capability of driving relevant traffic who are ready to purchase. Therefore, it increases the conversion rates by up to 14.6%. Now that you see these numbers, you would definitely want to create a proper SEO-friendly design. However, remember that it requires some knowledge about the technical part of SEO.
So now that search engine optimization has become a priority for search engines take a look at this article to gather some relevant and vital data.
What is the importance of an SEO-friendly website?
Companies that decide to invest in SEO will be able to improve their reach among the relevant traffic who are looking for similar services or products. Now it helps businesses get visibility in the critical step of their journey.
This is the reason why it has increased the chances of purchase. Moreover, when you combine it with blogging and content marketing, Search engine optimization helps to expand your brand by creating high-end content for users who are still not able to make their purchasing decision. It becomes helpful in the initial stages of the purchase.
You should always remember that an optimized website will help you to get improved traffic from search engines and retain them for a more extended period of time. Therefore, it has more chances of converting into legit customers. A website that has been properly optimized can ensure long-term growth in organic marketing without continuously investing in advertising.
The advantages or very much evident, but how would you get there? So, here we will find out how you can create an SEO-friendly website. Make sure that you read the following steps if you’re optimizing your existing website, creating one from scratch, or redesigning your website.
How do make SEO friendly website?
Whether you’re choosing to create a website or redesign the existing one, search engine optimization always plays a vital role in the strategic approach, as it is considered extremely important for marketing channels when it comes to getting customers. Remember that SEO is something other than something that can be done and dusted. It is lucrative, and you continuously have to work on it to get sales and traffic, even with the least effort.
So improving the SEO friendliness of your website means that the search engines will access the vital pages, and they can easily crawl and index those pages. Apart from this, there is a need to understand the contents present on every page and decide whether these pages have the ability to appear in search results.
Therefore, when you consider SEO as both tactical execution and strategic planning stages, it can be beneficial not only for content strategy but also in the layout and website design.
There is no denying that SEO practices are the same in different search engines, but you must consider the platform that you will choose to drive the traffic from. You have to work according to the guidelines of that particular search engine to improve traffic and visibility. This definitely depends on the target audience, as some of the consumers of some industries mostly come from Yahoo and Bing.
However, for most businesses, Google is one of the search engines that outperforms any other search engine. It has a vast market share of 92%, which is why it can provide you with some of the best traffic and visibility.
Keeping this in mind, let us find out the steps that you need to take to improve the mobile-friendliness of your website. Remember that all the concepts that I have created are made solely on the guidelines of Google. However, they might also suit the guidelines of other search engines.
Steps to making an SEO-friendly website
Create a proper SEO Plan
The very first thing that you must do for creating a website from scratch or for redesigning the existing website is to make a solid plan. There is always a need for the search engine optimization technique to be strategic and should be made by creating a plan. There should be no room for any guesswork, as it will only make things worse.
If you’re not planning out the website, you’re just inviting problems in the later stage. This is applicable to both tactical and strategic aspects of your website. This is the reason why it is crucial to launch a new website by creating a top-down plan on the way to approach SEO. This top-down plan will only help you to create a good scenario and understand how to get it.
For example, one of the most common strategic mistakes that you can make is avoiding keyword research and keyword brainstorming in the very beginning. When you do keyword brainstorming and research from previous, it allows you to create a map that brings a vast amount of traffic. If you are a service company that is operating in different cities, you need to plan the orders and priority of landing pages depending on those cities. This is critical as it can help to get a proper ranking for the target keywords in both cities.
On the contrary, such a plan can use the current resources that you have. This can become devastating to SEO success. One of the most common problems is overlooking minor tactical issues while planning. Such tactical issues can be anything from a bad layout of the landing page to adding custom content.
This will not only be detrimental to conversion as you will get limited room for communication, but also it will result in search engines like Google believing that all the critical pages in your website have thin content. Therefore, they will not prioritize those pages while showing them in the search results.
There is no denying that you can fix this problem later using plug-ins, but remember that when you use more plug-ins on the landing page, it will increase the loading time. Such a complex setup can only be detrimental to your landing page.
Create a proper site architecture
One of the primary things that you must consider while creating an SEO-friendly website is the architecture. You have to pay attention to the hierarchy that you’re choosing to structure the pages. Remember that it will have a direct impact on the understanding of search engines. It is even a reality for most websites that have several pages, like e-commerce websites.
Irrespective of the website or industry, there will obviously be some pages that will be more crucial than others. This is the reason why Google would like to find an organized way so that both users and machines would be able to understand. So creating a proper visual layout before redesigning the website or creating a website is a must.
Implement hub pages that are SEO-friendly
Hub pages are also popular as content hubs or topic clusters is another crucial factor that you must pay attention to while creating or restructuring the website. These pages are the ones that have relevant sub-pages. The most vital role of these pages is to create a content hub for both users and Google to find optimized, properly structured, and relevant content.
If your website primarily focuses on marketing, you will find a huge range of subjects. However, when you choose to break down marketing into relevant hubs, it can even improve performance. Some examples like Facebook ads, SEO, and content marketing can be some of the subcategories under marketing, which will be beneficial for both end users and search engines to understand.
Each will serve as pillar content where the users can find relevant articles. This is how users will be able to explore content and find relevant articles. You will also be able to interlink content and naturally promote pages in the Google search. So, when you don’t feature subcategories, it will become harder not only for readers but also for search engines to find relevant information.
Improve EAT
EAT in SEO generally stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It is a part of the guidelines of Google. While it is very easy to speculate EAT, Google has now confirmed that it is one of the significant aspects of algorithms.
To be very simple, EAT is something associated with credibility. Therefore, it means finding out whether you have the credibility to write about the subject. Some of the subjects would need a lesser EAT compared to others. For example, any topic associated with hobbies like handcrafting would not need much credibilities, like health and finances.
Irrespective of the strength, EAT is a critical element when it comes to ranking; you have to ensure that the blog content has assigned authors to them. When you implement them, you will leverage the existing credibility and create a better future. Apart from this, also keep in mind that EAT has an immense influence on off-page SEO.
Use responsive designs
After you have created a proper website structure, you must take time to consider a critical aspect of modern SEO, which is mobile friendliness. We all know that Google’s algorithm will always prioritize websites that are properly optimized for smartphones to shop. It has been estimated in 2021 almost 56% of the traffic came from mobile devices and which is why this trend is going to stay.
As Google is aware that the algorithm is continuously optimized to give a better experience, not only to the person on the computer but also who are using their mobile devices, responsive designs have become a need. Besides, Google has also upgraded the crawlers, and some of the top-ranking websites are crawled using mobile devices.
- Therefore, the first thing that you need is to make sure that the website has the proper technical standards to create a proper user experience. Well, you can do this by making sure of a fast-loading website that does not have some of the irritating elements like horizontal scrolling or pop-ups.
- The second most important thing, which is crucial as the first one, is optimizing content for these devices. It includes paying attention to the font size, headings, and a properly structured page layout so that the readers will be able to visualize all the contents and images through their mobile.
Add the crucial pages to the main menu
Keeping in mind the previous point, while you consider the website layout, which includes a mobile version, you also have to look at the navigational menu strategically. There is no surprise that the SEO-friendly website has been included with fantastic navigation.
The trend of search engine optimization has been established by providing a great experience to end users. To be very true, UX and SEO are now merging to provide a great user experience.
While designing an SEO-friendly website, the primary goal must be to create navigational content in a helpful way. This can be done by properly structuring the menu to promote pages that your customers would want to see.
So, if you are a service company, the primary menu needs to be the feature pages with individual services that you provide. If you are into providing products, you can use a similar approach by showing the categories. For bloggers, it is better to create blog topic categories.
Create a link to the secondary pages in the footer section
Most of the websites you design will only get a few pages in the main navigation. This is the reason why in order to avoid a chaotic situation, it is always better to interlink your website by providing the crucial pages in the footer section. Footer links are not a direct factor for the SEO itself.
However, when you follow the previous point, which is creating a good user experience factor, it can have a direct impact on the website’s ranking. Using footer links can help users understand the content they can find on the website. Even when someone comes for different reasons, they get the opportunity to directly find the content that they need and get more information about the company. This is how they improve branding and can easily rank in Google searches.
Set an SEO Friendly URL
When it is about the website pages, let us find out some of the important elements that usually make a website page. One of them is a URL structure. Keep in mind that SEO-friendly URLs are extremely important to rank higher in Google and can be an indirect factor in improving the user experience. However, if you don’t pay attention to it, it can work in a different way.
When you use your keyword in the website URL, not only does it becomes helpful for the website to rank higher, but also it becomes helpful for the users to understand. If you don’t follow this step, it can potentially hurt the ranking. Similar to a meta description and title tag, users generally are able to understand the content they can find on the page when they click on the URL. Apart from this, search engines like Google generally make use of URLs to understand the page contents.
Ensure placing robots.txt
You definitely have to find out how to help search engines like Google find the pages, but what about ensuring its crawl ability? The most common mistake that one can make from the SEO perspective is disallowing search engines.
When you correctly set the robots.txt file, it can help search engine crawlers crawl the website easily. You can also use the index content on the page by making use of meta robots tags. You have to make sure to use both setups properly to allow Google to crawl your website.
One of the most common mistakes made by the new SEO or website developers is not paying attention to this during website migration or redesigning. The settings are very easy, and their effects can be a little bit harsh. So make sure that you properly check the robots.txt file on a regular basis to ensure it is functional.
Reduce page loading time
You must pay attention to the technical setup of the website, as it can directly have an impact on the user experience. Remember that a fast-loading website is one of the vital requirements, as users do not have the patience to wait. You need to focus on creating an SEO-friendly website with a fast loading time.
A fast-loading website will have improved performance on different business metrics. Remember that a 100 MS reduction of load time in retail websites on a website can improve conversion by 8.4%. For the travel website, it can increase conversion to 10.1%.
However, there is more to it. Slow-loading websites will only discourage Google from indexing or crawling the URLs, as they have to spend considerably more time on your website, and even it is the same for users. Your users will not wait for the website to load and, therefore, will start bouncing back. So you have to make sure of improving the user experience by increasing the loading time.
Start Creating an SEO-Friendly Website
To be very true, there is quite a huge amount of work that you have to put into creating SEO-friendly websites. However, when you use the right tool and experts, it becomes easier to reach your goals. It is always mandatory for any business owner to look into their website’s SEO factor. So, the primary goal of any website is to reach its potential customers and improve their conversion, and hence they should always pay attention to both the technical aspects and the tactical things of a website.
As the market is continuously advancing and more competitors are emerging every day, it is a need for you to stay on top. And however, it can be a bit challenging for all the newcomers in this industry. As you have to pay attention to every single detail before creating a website, you need an expert who will work hand-in-hand with you. If you are looking for one search SEO expert who can help with SEO website design, you can choose Digital Habibi.
Since creating SEO-friendly websites has now become inevitable for any business owner, you should always pay attention to them while designing or redesigning your website. I can make sure of creating an SEO design by helping and working with the design team to ensure the best website quality. I understand the challenges and the need to maintain the guidelines, and hence, choosing Digital Habibi will always be helpful in getting fewer SEO complaints.
SEO FAQs
Yes, you have to check every single aspect of your website. As contents play a significant role in improving the site’s performance, there is a need for you to create unique content. You also need to make sure that the contents are not duplicated and have relevant information. Make sure to start a practice of creating content according to the search intent, as it has the maximum chances of getting ranked in search engines.
Meta descriptions and title tags are extremely crucial for everyone who is looking forward to improving their SEO efforts. A properly optimized website might struggle to attract search engines if the pages are properly structured. Remember that meta description and title tag works as a promotional banner that helps viewers to determine if the website has relevant and useful content.
Yes. Since the market has been advancing at a huge pace and everyone is looking forward to going on top, nothing can be better than using expert hands. Since experts have knowledge of google’s guidelines, they make sure to follow them thoroughly and ensure the best results.
Internal linking is extremely crucial for any website that is in this genre. When your website has been categorized properly, you can stay assured that it becomes easy to interlink. This is also beneficial in retaining your customers and moving from one page to another on your website itself.
