There are millions of websites that are not optimized for search engine traffic at the moment, most business owners don’t understand why this is happening.
A lot of business owners expect their website to be on search engines after purchasing a domain and website hosting along with creating the website.
They paid a bunch of money and now are expecting the search engine traffic to come automatically due to their purchases but that’s only one part of getting search traffic.
Website Speed, Usability, Responsiveness
I’ve seen a lot of websites where the web designer went for the look of the website while disregarding how they are slowing the website down.
You want to make sure your website loads quickly, if you’re using a WordPress website like a lot of people starting out, here are a few things to do to increase your WordPress website speed.
Now for usability, there are so many websites that are so darn hard to use, the menu is missing or the links are sized very small, it’s no good for the user. The theme could be a mess too!
You want to make sure the website user can view the information on your website and navigate without a problem, search engines know that is a big current problem.
Now for responsiveness, your website should be flexible and fluid, it should be able to load for any type of device such as desktops, tablets, mobile devices, etc.
Make sure your website is neat, the code is all together, nothing is broken, don’t neglect these things or the search engines will definitely neglect your URLs.
Titles, Descriptions, Permalinks, ALT Tags
Download a plugin like Yoast SEO if you’re using WordPress so you can fill out the titles, descriptions, etc on each post and page.
Make sure search engines know what the title of your page is, the description of the page, make sure the permalink relates to the page title, and remember ALT tags!
What’s an ALT tag? It’s how we identify images to Google and search engines, we want the search engines to know what the image is about, match it with your keywords.
If you don’t put this information yourself then search engines are just going to pull information themselves if they do and then index.
All of these factors come together and you want to make sure your keywords and phrases are included in your title, description, permalink, alt tag, etc.
Content That Matches User Searches
People want to find what they are looking for such as products or services, anything really, photos and videos, you name it and people will look for it.
Google and search engines alike want to match their users with websites that match their intentions, so Google wants a website that loads quickly and has accurate information.
Google wants to give the right answers to its user-base so they don’t leave for another search engine, they also want to deliver that answer as quickly as possible.
Having credible backlinks can help Google identify your content as useful, but you can create articles that highlight keywords and phrases you want to rank for.
Make sure to write articles, post videos, create images, make sure your website is producing something so search engine bots will regularly visit your website and index it.
So Many Search Engine Factors To Consider
You have to think about the hundreds of factors that go into the algorithm that search engines use to produce their indexing and rankings for websites.
It’s amazing how much thought goes into what website should be displayed first such as backlinks, keywords, content, website speed, server type, and the list goes on.
If I had to say what the most important factors have to be, I would probably say everything I listed in the sentence before along with having a site-map and robots.txt file.
You might want to also consider getting into Google My Business, registering with Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmasters), start submitting your links.
That’s the purpose of Google Search Console, you can monitor your performance and website errors along with submitting links and checking keyword impressions, etc.
My name is Greg and I have 20 years of experience in creating and managing websites. I have 6+ million views collectively on social media platforms like Quora, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Contact me to get your website optimized for search engines.
