Making Your Website Search Engine Friendly: The Basics

You've heard us say it before - just because you have a website doesn't mean you'll get leads, clients or sales. It takes a well-made website with a healthy dose of digital marketing to get visitors - and then to turn those visitors into clients and sales.

Where do you start? With the basics.

1. Start with a beautiful, well branded, up-to-date website.

For 2017 that means big banner images, bold text, a scrolling format, mobile friendly format and brighter color. Of course, you want to include benefit rich text and calls to action.

2. Use readable text.

That means using text on the page, - not hidden in flash, not in pictures, but actual text on the page.

3. Include H1, H2 tags.

H1 and H2 tags are used in behind-the-scenes code to label your headlines. And while you can look and see something at the top of a webpage that’s in big text and is obviously the headline, the code is how a search engine knows it's the headline.

4. Use Meta Tags like title and meta description.

While these aren’t things you see on the website, they will show up in a search engine listing. This information is vital to each page on your website.

5. Watch your URL structure.

For example, www.atwoodsites.com/website-examples. Since search engines display URLS in their results, the URL structure can impact your visibility and click-thru rates (number of people who visit your site after seeing the link).

6. Avoid duplicate content.

Using the same text on more than one page is a no-no. You might even wonder why someone would do that, but imagine this: You sell t-shirts and have the same shirt in a different style for men, and another for women. You might describe the tshirt as “mens tshirt abcde”. Just replacing the word mens with womens and using the same tshirt description seems logical, but search engines see this as duplicate content.

Does all this seem tricky? Because it gets way more complicated when you go beyond the basics...which is why you might consider using digital marketing services. But for the basics, Atwood Sites has you covered with any website we build.