Creating a website is simple and easy, there’s no argument there. The hard part however is making a website that actually gets worthwhile traffic. This is where SEO comes in to save the day. If you’re not in the know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and refers to anything used to make your website more appealing in the eyes of Google or other search engines.
It would also be a prudent move to do an SEO audit from time to time so you can quickly see if all of your bases are covered.
There’s thousands of articles out there on how best optimize your site down to where to put clickable buttons and how many images you should have on site. Since I won’t have too much time to get into the nitty-gritty of SEO, I’ll just be listing some of the basics of SEO that will hold true regardless of what changes Google makes to their algorithm, essentially these are going to be the timeless tips of SEO that should always be followed.
On that note, let’s get at it:
Don’t Keyword Stuff
Keyword stuffing is trying to put as many relevant keywords in every sentence with the misguided intention of thinking Google will pick you up as a highly relevant source for a particular keyword. Google is wise to this practice now as many sites used to keyword stuff extensively, some even used to put keywords in a font that blended in to the background, so you had no idea as a user that it was even happening. Your site will be seen as spammy and penalized by Google if your keyword density is too high. Try to have your content talk about your particular keywords as naturally as possible while still having them show up often enough that the reader and Google knows what your site is about.
Don’t Skip Meta Descriptions
A lot of newbie SEOs focus far too much on the body of their article themselves when it comes to keywords and not in all of the other parts of their page that get combed over by search engines. The meta descriptions serve as a quick summary of what your page contains and factors in heavily to what webcrawlers think of your site. Choosing to skimp on meta descriptions means huge missed potential.
Don’t Neglect The Mobile Experience
With website browsing from smartphones more or less on par with browsing from computers, choosing not to optimize your website for mobile users can eliminate a huge portion of potential visitors. Regardless of the quality of your content nobody will remain on your site if it isn’t easy to navigate and read. It is now thought that the mobile speed and ease of use on a site is heavily factored into a site’s Google ranking, as Google has no interest in serving up websites that half of their user base won’t be able to use.
In Conclusion
These three tips are what I’ve noticed most new SEOs forget to think about when improving their websites. SEO is constantly evolving with the changing demands of users and expectations of Google, so I must remind any webmasters that SEO should be treated as a constant learning experience instead of just something to quickly read up on for a little bit and then not pick up again.