Is your website search engine friendly? The complex algorithms of the search engines may seem like a mystery, but there are some basic things that you can do to make your website look more appealing next time a search engine bot visits. Here are 8 key elements that can help to keep your website in the search engine results.
1. Make It Mobile Friendly
For your website to get a better spot in search listings for mobile devices like phones and tablets, it should be mobile friendly. Google and Bing generally list mobile-friendly sites nearer the top within the results they deliver to mobile device users. If your website is still not mobile optimized, it’s time to make a change.
2. Set Up an SSL Certificate
Under Google’s new rules, the engine prefers sites that use https and have a valid SSL certificate. This also gives more confidence to your website’s visitors. If you don’t have an SSL certificate, check with your hosting company about purchasing one. They are usually inexpensive and some are even included with your hosting at no extra charge.
3. Be Speedy
Search engines reward sites which load faster, without any lag time where visitors need to wait for clunky images or slow responding video to load. You can look into the speed of your website using Pingdom’s free tools. If your website is coming up slow, it’s a good idea to make whatever server upgrades you need to, to speed it up.
4. Use Media
Website visitors love media, and so do the search engines. Frequently adding pictures, video, audio, or podcasts to your website can enable you to get additional listings for that content, leading to more visitors.
5. Get Social
If you haven’t already, link your website to social media. Likes, comments, shares, and so on convey to Google and Bing that your website is relevant and popular, and can really give your search engine rankings a boost.
6. Write Longer Content
Short and sweet sites just don’t cut it anymore. Write longer pages of content for your website with 1,500 words or longer, to lure the various search engine bots in with meaty information and a lot of appealing keywords.
7. Build a Sitemap
Sitemaps are essential as they make it more likely that the search engines will discover all of your website’s pages. This is very important because the search engines will list all of the pages they can find, giving you greater exposure. If you don’t have a sitemap you can build one easily for free with WriteMaps’ free online generator, or a similar free online tool.
8. Remember Meta Tags
Even though Google does not give much weight to meta tags anymore, Bing still uses them for its listings, so make sure you have those important meta tags like title, description, and keywords added to your website’s code.
Incorporating these basic elements into your website can make it a whole lot friendlier to the search engines, which can result in a whole lot more business for you!
