How To Design An SEO Friendly Website That Ranks in 2020

SEO is a crucial process within digital marketing where web pages and content get ranked, with the help of content optimization. Making a website SEO friendly means the search engines can crawl each page on the website and interpret the content effectively, leading to higher rankings. The main aim of search engine optimization is to get more traffic from diverse origins. SEO plays a vital role in online business websites but is also of great importance to other interactive sites. A better understanding of SEO will help you create a user-friendly website that ranks higher in search engines. Now the question is, how do you design an SEO friendly website for the following year?

Find the right keywords

Keywords are essential for an SEO friendly website. They’re crucial because they let new customers find you through searches. To get the right keywords, you have to ask yourself what your audience is searching for. Keep in mind that keywords need to be relevant both to you and your customers.

If you’re not sure where to begin, a keyword planner is a useful tool, to begin with. It has limitations, but it’s free and worth trying out. A good idea would be to include keywords in your page title and description. Make sure to add them to your content at least a couple of times, but don’t overdo them. Your header and several subheaders should include critical keywords too.

Use SEO for image

If your website has a rich gallery, optimizing those images will help you boost your rank. When creating an HTML document for your website, add an ALT attribute to your image tags.

ALT attribute should describe your photographs in 2 or 3 words. It would be great if you could find a way to fit your keywords there as well. It’s important to make sure the words are relevant to the pictures, though.

The other way around

Do not underestimate the power of mobile SEO. Nowadays, most mobile sites are a complete mess which is why you have to put some effort to fix and upgrade them. Most of the time, people will search for your site through a mobile device. With that being said, mobile performance should be your top priority.

Build sites for mobile-first. Later you can make them compatible for desktop devices. That way, your website won’t have to be optimized for speed after you launch it. If you don’t have a mobile-friendly website yet, it’s time to do something about it, as mobile is slowly taking over the market.

Make your links look friendly.

URL’s do influence SEO indexing. Not only do they show the address of your website, but they also act as signals for your content. A good thing about URL’s is that they help search engines determine what your page is about.

But how do you create an SEO friendly URL? A good URL must contain a variety of keyword phrases. Use words instead of symbols and keep it short and simple. If you go overboard with the words and symbols,, your links will look less attractive. An important thing to remember is that if your URL is not intelligible to people, search engines won’t be able to understand it, either.

Link building

Link building is essential for a successful SEO friendly website.  By itself, each link may not represent much. However, the added value of a wide variety of rich links will make search engines rank your website higher.

Strengthening your off-page backlink profile is important too. It’s a great way to make search engines work in your favour. You can do this through sponsored posts on other websites. Find sites that offer the possibility of guest posting, reach out to the owners, and make a deal with them.

Google is not the only search engine

Undoubtedly, Google is the most used search engine in the whole world. Its platform is constantly updated to improve the user experience, which already plays a significant role in the increment of your traffic.

But there are other search engines that some people prefer over google. If you want to stand out, optimize your content according to their standards as well. Some search engines, such as Bing, for example, require optimization if you want to have a good rating. Do the necessary research and create a list of search engines people use the most and then adjust your webpage accordingly.

Optimize the length of the articles you publish

A good article doesn’t have to be a long one. Times have changed, and you won’t necessarily increase the traffic if you publish longer posts. As a matter of fact, the tables seem to have turned. The length of your articles is almost completely irrelevant now. What matters is the quality of your posts.

If your articles provide the audience with valuable information you’re already way ahead of the curb. Check your Google Analytics report and see which of your posts are the most engaging. Use this information for creating content in the future.

Create a connection

Fresh content should include a significant amount of external and internal links. If you aim towards getting more traffic, add more internal links. Connect your latest work with older articles or blog posts. That way, you will allow the search engine and users to find your best articles.

When it comes to external links, try to add links to the companies with a good reputation. If the links of the sites you want to include are good, your pages will automatically rank higher.

Hire an expert

If you’re not sure where to begin, or just want to see the results quickly, maybe it’s time to let someone more experienced do the work. Many Australian websites utilize SEO professionals to monitor and adjust their websites. Hiring a professional will save you a lot of time and with a decent monetary investment, your traffic will increase drastically. Many professional SEO experts in Sydney will make sure your website shows up at the top of the search engine results with minimal effort. One thing’s for sure, an SEO expert will make your website design and optimization go a lot smoother, so they might be worth considering.

Optimize for speed

First impressions really are everything. Your audience will make a judgement of your website based on their first visit. That’s why you should everything in your power to create a good initial experience for your users. One of the first things the users will notice is the loading speed of your webpage. To generate better results, optimize website speed and site performance. There are a few ways to achieve this.

One of the options is to move your website to a better host. If possible, minimize the number of JavaScript and CSS files for better performance.  If none of the above is possible, optimize the size of your images on your website. Use tools such as ImageOptim to reduce the image size without compromising the quality.

Conclusion

Learning SEO from scratch is hard. It will take you months to master it and see any significant results. But if you’re a website owner, it’s one of the most essential skills for your career development. Take your time to learn the fundamentals and then slowly build your knowledge base. In the meantime, find an SEO professional to do the necessary optimization. But once you learn how to handle SEO on your own, you’ll be unstoppable. Keep in mind that learning SEO is an ongoing process. There’s always something new to learn, so keep an open mind. Adapting to new changes and updates won’t be hard if you’re truly passionate and willing to learn. Work on different projects and you’ll gain experience quickly.