An effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy requires more than just building backlinks; it also requires on-page optimization. By making the following SEO ranking factors and upgrades to your site, however, you’ll have a greater chance of a securing a top search ranking.
1) Sitemap
Adding an XML sitemap to your website helps search engines identify the location of its pages, resulting in a higher number of indexed pages and more organic search traffic. As its name suggests, a sitemap is a map of your website. It contains an itemized list of all page URLs for your site. Google is pretty good at finding pages on its own, but sometimes it needs a helping hand. By creating a sitemap and adding it to your site’s root directory, you’ll encourage search engines to crawl and index all your site’s pages.
2) Custom Meta Titles and Descriptions
Another way to make your website more search engine friendly is to include a custom meta title and meta description on each page. The former is used by search engines to create web page listing titles whereas the latter is used by search engines to create the descriptions for those listings. While both influence search rankings, meta titles are particularly important. When optimizing a web page to rank for a keyword, include the keyword somewhere in the title tag, preferably at the beginning. In the description, discuss what the page is about while enticing users to click and read or access it.
Although you can create longer meta titles and descriptions, Google will only display up to 60 characters of a page’s title and 320 characters of its description. Therefore, you should keep your meta titles and descriptions under this limit.
3) Optimized Images
Optimizing your website’s images offers several benefits. It helps search engines understand what your content is about, and it encourages visitors to stay on your site. It’s hard to read web pages consisting only of text. If a visitor encounters a page on your site’s only text, he or she may leave. Adding optimized images to the page, however, will encourage the visitor to stay while also conveying the meaning of your content to search engines.
So, what’s the best to optimize your site’s images? First, give them a descriptive file name that accurately reflects what they are about. Next, include a longer description in your images’ alt text HTML element. Both search engines and human visitors alike will see the alt text. You can also optimize your images by resizing and cropping them.
4) Responsive Design
If your website isn’t responsive, you need to upgrade it with a responsive design now. This proportion-based framework automatically adjusts depending on the user’s device. When someone visits your website on a desktop computer, for example, a responsive design will show them a desktop-optimized version of your site. But when someone visits your website on a smartphone, it will show them a mobile-optimized version. There are other ways to make your website compatible on mobile devices, but responsive offers the highest level of device compatibility.
Performing these SEO upgrades will help your site rank in the search results. Just remember to continue adding high-quality content and building relevant backlinks.