Web page optimization is the first step to increasing your website's search engine optimization (SEO). Optimizing your web pages means designing them to get the best use out of them. Whether it's search engine optimization, which increases your website's ranking on search engines, or performance optimization, which ensures that your website runs quickly and smoothly, it is extremely beneficial for you and your visitors to have your web pages be the best they can be.
Since we're focusing on SEO, here are several ways to optimize your web pages for search engines:
Include Meta and Title Tags
A meta tag does not alter the content visible on the website, they are used to alert search engines of a website's content, to be included in search results for users requesting related information. Using meta tags and including keywords in the description can help improve your website's rankings, leading visitors who search for those keywords directly to your site.
Use a title tag at the top of each page to identify the document's overall content. Accurate title and meta description tags help search engines describe a site in search results.
Remember keywords? These are popular search terms, words related to your overall topic or the topic of a specific page or blog post. Researching popular search terms that could lead visitors to your site is important, so you can use the best keywords in your web pages and help improve your optimization. Knowing what your potential customers are going to search and adding those phrases to your website will help lead them straight to you. Then:
Having content with keywords and phrases is the key to higher rankings on search engines. Use the keywords your researched liberally on your home page. Include keywords in header tags, title tags, and meta tags, and in anchor text. If possible, use keywords in the URL's of new pages.
Alt Tags are "alternate" descriptions of the images on your website. Including a short description of your images in their Alt Tags makes them searchable by search engines. You can use keywords but keep the description as accurate as possible.
Having good web page content is critical to keeping site visitors interested and coming back for more. The more traffic your website gets, the higher its search engine rankings will be. Try to keep visitors engaged, whether that's with information about new services/products or even just a blog that shares information about your business and gives off a personal feel.
Get other websites to link to yours. Backlinks can increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. List your website in relevant directories and forums, and ask websites on similar topics to link to content on your website. Many major search engines rank web pages based on the number and quality of links that point to the site.
A site map is a list of pages on a website accessible to users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for Web design, or a Web page that lists the pages on a website, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This list gives search engines an easy and fast way to scroll the website and relate the links to searched terms and phrases.
Frames can be useful when designing the layout and positioning on your website. However, frames tend to split a page into pieces and section off content, making it difficult for search engines to see the entire content on a page as a whole.
Search engines don't care whether your HTML code is error-free, but they do rely on the basic correctness of the code to find out which portions of your web page to index. If your HTML code contains errors, it is possible that only some portions of your website are included in the search engine's database.
Now, we realize this seems like a lot of work, and it can be. Optimizing your web pages from the very beginning when designing your website is the easiest, but that doesn't mean an existing website is difficult to optimize. That's where we come in! The team here at JM2 Webdesigners is always ready to dive in deep and optimize each web page so you don't have to.
Give us a call at @BUSINESSPHONETOLLFREE@, stop at our office at 403 E Lincolnway in Downtown Valparaiso Indiana, email at @BUSINESSEMAILADDRESS@, or use our online contact form here. Let us know if we can help optimize your website and get your search engine rankings to be the best they can be!