How to Build an SEO Powerful Website in 2022
How to get people to your website and then how to convert those visitors into clients is one of the biggest questions of small business owners today. SEO plays a massive role. Let’s get into it.
There are many things to consider when creating a website. Who is your target audience? What do you want your website to achieve? There are many decisions and actions to take and to consider, but you must start with the basics.
The following points will give you a place to begin and are considered the SEO basic best practices.
Holistic SEO for small business owners
What is Holistic SEO? This term refers to using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) across your entire website. Your content on each page – the text and pictures and even video – must be exceptionally well crafted and current. Your primary solutions or product should be well covered. The search engines (Google, Bing, Firefox, etc.) are constantly scraping the web for algorithms that are in line with what people are searching for. If potential customers and the search engines find your site clear and informative, you’re likely to be ranked higher than your competition.
What Makes a Good, Effective Website?
- Quality of your content: Your audience is searching for solutions and information. It’s up to you to have clear content that answers their questions, quickly and concisely. You need to:
- A) find out what they are looking for? And,
- B) give them web pages containing written text, pictures, and/or videos that answer their questions.
Your site has a clear goal for your user’s intent: You have to ask “Why would anyone want to use my product or services?” Then, your goal is to answer those questions clearly. Figure out all the different ways potential customers end up on your site and answer their questions. Map out what you think your user journey is and then place your content accordingly. Also, how you answer their questions is important. You will find that a conversational style will work best.
- Technically Acceptable: Deciding which website platform is right for you is important. Nowadays, WordPress is and has been a leader because of its ability to work on any hosting company. Crafting good quality SEO powerful pages on it is simple. A well-designed website loads quickly and is easily crawlable by search engines. WordPress will serve you well in this regard.
- Your Site is Secure, Safe, and Trustworthy: People, as well as search engines, are always looking at whether a website is safe and secure. If your site doesn’t show a “lock” in the browser window, that’s a red flag and says you’re not aware of the fact your site could be in jeopardy of being hacked. Visitors may also feel unsafe on your site. Use up-to-date software and have your SSL in order. Using strong passwords is easier than fixing a site after it’s been hacked.
- Your website should be branded: Good design and on-brand are important, but they should also be very clear and easy to use for everyone. Take into consideration how your users will feel using the site. Are there any frustrating or hard-to-navigate aspects to it that need to be addressed? Will your visitors want to come back? These are points to consider and to ask as the site is being constructed.
- Know thy User: Your site should be aimed at speaking to your users – your target audience. They have goals that brought them to your site. You have to make sure their goals are addressed and accomplished while still keeping your business goals in sight. Study your user’s habits. Research what their needs and wants are so you can answer their questions with solutions to the problems they are trying to find.
- Is your website mobile-friendly? Most marketers these days have been researching how many people use their mobile devices to view websites. Turns out every year the percentage of mobile sites and users on them has increased. According to Google, Mobile devices drove 61% of visits to U.S. websites in 2020, up from 57% in 2019. Desktops were responsible for 35.7% of all visits in 2020, and tablets drove the remaining 3.3% of visitors. Globally, 68.1% of all website visits in 2020 came from mobile devices—an increase from 63.3% in 2019. Based on these statistics when designing websites, it’s all about mobile design and is mobile-friendly.
- Your site can have a conversation with the search engines: When someone searches the web for a product or service, they usually use keywords and key phrases. The “bots” (search spiders) must match up with web pages for those queries. Enter structured data in a Schema format. What is structured data? Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content; for example, on a recipe page, what are the ingredients, the cooking time and temperature, the calories, and so on. Schema is kind of like a translator for the search engines. It helps the engines recognize if what they are searching for is really there on that page…or not.
How To Improve Your Site Now
There are many elements that make a good website. Planning what the purpose and goals are for the site is paramount to just getting a domain and posting something on a WordPress platform. There are things you can do now to improve your website if you’ve got one. Here are a few tips:
- Check your internal site linking structure: Good internal linking structure helps the search engines understand your content and your site overall. Figure out what is most important for your customers and prospects to know about in your site and structure your pages and content in that order. If your site doesn’t have a clear structure it will be conceived as just random pages. The structure tells Google what is important and what isn’t. Think about your customers – can they find what they’re looking for easily on your site? Structure the pages so they can. Here’s a good place to start.
a. Homepage
Your HOME page can act as a navigation hub and the most important pages should link directly from there.
b. Categories (or sections)
c. Subcategories (only for larger sites)
d. Individual pages and posts
- Breadcrumbs: In addition to a clear page linking you should also consider breadcrumbs as a way to reflect the structure of your site and helps visitors know where they are within your site.
- Page Quality: This is probably the most important element of your website. You can always review your content and research more about your site topics and add fresh content that gives more and more defined subject quality. If you use Yoast as an SEO quality checker, getting that green light means the content is in good shape.
- Check how fast or slow your website loads: You don’t want your visitors or potential clients waiting a long time for the information they want to come up on their screen. Most people will only stay on a page for a few seconds and then leave. You should check if your site has images that are a larger size than needed and reduce their file size so they load quickly. Also, caching your site keeps data from building up and slowing your site. This plugin can reduce file size for all your images: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/ and there are many free caching plugins available that will reduce the page file size significantly which allows quicker loading.
Walker Kreative is in the business of helping our clients meet their business goals through top-tier digital marketing solutions. Contact us If you already have a website and would like us to review it or build you a new SEO-powerful one.
Barry Shereshevsky
SEO/Marketing Manager, Walker Kreative
