To ensure the success of your website and a strong online presence, it’s important to develop a good SEO strategy. When most people think about SEO, they think about matching their content to keyword searches. However, your site’s SEO is actually affected by a number of factors and essentially every aspect of your website plays a role. We’ve compiled a list of the site-level factors that can affect your site’s SEO. It’s important to take these factors into account when designing or redesigning your website and making important decisions about your site’s navigation.
1. Content Value
One of the most important factors in your site’s SEO is the value of your content. Google penalizes sites that don’t bring anything new to the conversation. It especially penalizes affiliate sites with thin content. In order to rank highly on Google, it’s important to create content that is valuable and contains unique insights to create new conversation.
2. Contact Us Page
Your “Contact Us” page is an important part of your SEO. Google prefers sites with detailed contact information, as it makes businesses appear more reputable. Contact information is also very important for mobile and local search. Your “Contact Us” page will provide information about your location, which Google will then use to match mobile searchers with businesses close by. To improve the reputation of your site and ensure the best results for mobile and local searches, it’s essential to have a detailed “Contact Us” page.
3. Site Architecture
The way your site is put together is an important part of SEO, as it helps Google organize and understand your content. When your site is well organized, Google can access and index every page on your site more easily. One great way to organize your site to help visitors and Google navigate it is to create pillar pages. Pillar pages involve organizing your website content by general overarching topics that are then each separated into subtopics, which lead to new pages. When you organize your site into general topics and subtopics, it is much easier for Google to index and understand.
4. Sitemap
Including a sitemap is a good way to boost your website’s SEO. A sitemap helps search engines index your pages more easily and thoroughly. It’s a good way to allow search engines to understand your site to improve your rankings for your target keywords and search terms. When you include a sitemap on your website, it will improve your visibility on search engines because it will allow them to easily index your site.
5. Site Security
Encrypted sites are important to Google. If your site is secure, you will notice that your domain is preceded by HTTPS rather than HTTP. Google prefers more secure sites in order to protect its users and their information. However, according to Google, encryption only acts as a tiebreaker between two otherwise equal results.
6. Breadcrumb Navigation
User-friendly site navigation is a great way to boost your SEO. Breadcrumb navigation is a good option to create an easily navigable site. Breadcrumb navigation is when each page is connected to other pages through subtopics, and you can follow your path through each page. For example, on the ImageWorks site, you can click on “Services,” then choose “Digital Marketing” within services, then choose “SEO.” Within each of these subtopics, you can trace your path back to the previous step. Breadcrumb navigation helps Google characterize your information and navigate it, improving your ranking for your target keywords.
7. Mobile Optimization
In this day and age, more than half of all searches are performed on mobile devices. For this reason, it’s important to have your website properly optimized for mobile devices. Because mobile is such an important part of search, Google actually penalizes sites that are not properly optimized for mobile devices. For this reason, when creating your site, it’s important to properly optimize it for all mobile devices.
8. Usability
According to Google, a quality website needs to be easy to use and easy to navigate. If your site is not easy to use, it will have fewer page views and a higher bounce rate. Google takes these factors into account when ranking websites. Therefore, if your site is not easy to use, Google will penalize it because visitors will not want to spend a lot of time on it.
ImageWorks, LLC | CT Search Engine Optimization
While professional SEO services can offer many opportunities to your business, you should never depend on SEO alone for the growth of your business. The companies that thrive on the online world have a comprehensive approach and utilize both online and offline marketing strategies. SEO can be a big piece; however, it is only one slice of the marketing pie.
By integrating all of today's Web tools such as SEO, social media, pay per click, and blogs, ImageWorks, LLC can turn your site into a lead generation tool.
