SEO Basics Everyone Building A Website Needs To Know (Without Having To Learn Anything About Marketing)

By the time they come to me looking for SEO help, it's always too late. [SEO = search engine optimization, the ability for a site to show higher up on search engine results, like Google, Bing or Yahoo]

So many SEO clients insist on coming to me after they've already built their site, thinking I just need to finesse a few words and they'll be ranking #1 on Google. Virtually every part of your website needs to be optimized for effective SEO, not just the text!

Let me save you some aggravation and lay out a few things you need to know about building an optimized site in basic terms.

Here are the top 5 things to have in mind as you are building a site:

1. Images need alt text added to them so they appear in image searches
2. URLs should be clean and use relevant keywords
3. Each page should have a purpose and not overlap with other pages
4. Your site needs to look perfect both on a smartphone and on a laptop
5. Your site needs to load fast

I'm sure SEO experts are going to tell me that I'm missing this or that. But I'm not talking to them, I'm talking to you, someone who hasn't worked for years in digital marketing and needs to know the basics to make sure they build their site right.

Images need alt text added to them so they appear in image searches

Have you ever done a search and looked at the image results? How does the search engine know what images to show for your search question? Anytime you upload an image to your website you have an option to add 'alt text' — which are essentially keywords associated with that image.

Make sure every image on your website has alt text! It's another way for your site to appear in the search results.

URLs should be clean and use relevant keywords

Most people don't notice the URL of the sites they are on since it's not really relevant — but search engines read that information just as much as the text on the page below. Most content management systems (what you build your pages on) are savvy enough to let you choose your own URL text, but if you don't take advantage of this, you might be left with a URL that isn't doing you any favors.

Basically, you want your URLs for your site to explain exactly what the page is.

www.websitename.com/services/sales-and-marketing

This URL tells the search engines that the page is one of the services pages, and that it is talking about sales and marketing. I'm not going to give you examples of bad URLs, because I just want you to know how to do it right.

Each page should have a purpose and not overlap with others

I've worked on site projects where the pages have already been built and it's my job to clean up the text and optimize for the relevant search terms. The problem I run into is that so many pages say the same thing — multiple pages that all talk about the same general service, in addition to other pages that talk specifically about the sub-services.

As you are setting up your site, you only need one page per item or service you are trying to sell. It's okay to have a category page called "Services" where you mention each service, then link to a sub-page where you go into more detail. What's not ok is thinking, "Oh, I want to rank for this term, so I'll have 3 pages that talk about just that — then my site will definitely show up for that search term!"

Wrong — your site will look spammy and also Google won't know which is the right page to show when someone searches, so they will show none of them.

Your site needs to look perfect both on a smartphone and on a laptop

Google has made it very clear that they value the user experience so much on mobile devices, that if your site doesn't work right on mobile, they will penalize you so that your site doesn't show up on desktop searches either. People spend much more time on their phones than on their computers, so mobile optimization needs to be built into your site from day one — including making sure any forms you build for desktop can also be filled out easily on a smartphone.

Your site needs to load fast!

No one is going to wait more than 3 seconds for your site to load — especially if they are on a smartphone. Google and Bing know this, which is why they are going to penalize your site if it takes too long to load.

The common culprits for slow-loading pages are:

• Images are too big
• Plugins that make your site look cool also cause it to load slowly
• Too many ads on the page
• Bad hosting

Tl;dr: Focusing on the 5 categories above will help your site function better and allow Google and other search engines to allow you to rank higher on the search results page. Want more digital marketing advice? Reach out to us.