Because Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is constantly evolving, there is no “perfect” way to optimize your website to become a top search result every time. Search engine algorithms are often updated with new ways of understanding web pages, content, networks, and code — so even the best SEO experts can’t predict every web change that will or will not work.
Although we can’t know every detail about SEO, there are some well-known best practices that will help push your website to the top of any search.
Content
Optimizing content is well known across the industry as the best way to improve your SEO ranking. There are several key details about your content that you should always keep in mind. Consider the following when creating content for your site:
- Use unique content found nowhere else on the web.
- Create new content or update existing content on a semi-regular basis through blogging, news articles, and links.
- Check spelling, grammar, and readability.
- Keep all your content organized.
- Make sure the amount of content on each page is fairly consistent.
- Use relevant images.
Link Building
Link Building is when a website links to or from your website and is critical when legitimizing your website in the eyes of the search engine. This helps show SEO algorithms the importance or popularity of your website. The easiest way to do this is through social media and third-party article publication.
- Keep in mind that incoming links are generally more important than outgoing. In other words, outside websites linking to your website often has a bigger impact that link to other websites from your own site.
- Make sure to link your website next to your name anytime you write an article or blog on another site.
- Be sure to have your website on all of your social media profiles.
- Actively participate in your company’s social media accounts with updates that link to your website.
Website Age
The age of your domain name is an SEO factor that many people don’t consider. Although it’s not the most important part, it can often influence your ranking. Typically, sites older than 6–9 months will begin to rank higher in search results. It’s important to know this when launching a new site or changing your domain name.
Impact’s SEO Approach
Many of the SEO factors are in the back end of your website. When developing your site, Impact actively employs the industry’s best practices.
Clean and Organized Code
The code written for your website is organized by and follows all of the industry’s best practices when it comes to how the code should be written.
Mobile-Friendly Design and Code
Mobile web traffic is becoming almost as popular as standard web traffic. Because of this, mobile-friendly (or responsive) web pages are a key factor in SEO. Responsive websites are coded in a way that will automatically adjust the page’s content to the screen size.
Every website developed at Impact is fully responsive and optimized for any device. An example of this is easy to see by visiting your website on your mobile device or simply resizing your web browser to make it look small.
Optimized URLs
URLs are created to be readable and consistent with your content. This is an important factor in SEO and creates what is known as a “crawlable link structure.”
Meta Tags
The results that pop up in search engine searches have titles and descriptions. For each of the pages within your site, we customize the title and description to match the page, keywords, your name, and your company. This is done within the code of your website.
Keywords are another important aspect of meta tags and are what will ultimately bring people to your website. We make sure that all of the most relevant keywords are spread throughout your web page, description tags, and within the code.
Contact an Impact team member today if you’d like to learn more about SEO best practices.
