SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website in a search engines organic (unpaid) results.
Search engines are limited in how they crawl/interpret web content. Thus, there are several tricks, rules, or steps that can be followed to design an SEO friendly website.
First and foremost, having index-able content. In order to perform better in search engine results, your most important content or keywords you’ll be targeting need to be in HTML. This is simply because search engines often ignore or devalue images, flash files etc. in comparison to HTML text.
It is important to research and place keywords strategically. Keyword research tools such as the built-in Keyword Planner on Google and 3rd party sites such as SEM Rush can be used to research appropriate keywords. After developing an appropriate set of keywords, placing these within the content is just as complex a task, if not more complex. Ideally, placing keywords in the URL of the website is helpful, although generally it is recommended to focus on areas that register well with search engines. For instance, headings and content throughout the page. It should also be noted that overdoing the keyword presence will create a negative reaction from search engines.
Furthermore, including meta data and title tags is also important. Title tags are the title element of a page which is visible in the header of the browser. When creating title tags you should be mindful of length, place important keywords close to the front, and consider readability and emotional impact. Meta tags were originally intended as a proxy for information about a website’s content, although also serve as an important factor for SEO.
Finally, a couple additional recommendations – keep your content updated, use images sparingly and build backlinks (external websites that link to your website, including directories) legitimately.
At Spring Web Solutions, we follow each of these steps when designing and developing our client’s websites. We deliver websites that are developed with SEO in mind to get the best results possible within the organic search results.
