If you’re going to get serious about creating a website, you need to start thinking about SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and refers to optimizing your website so that it can be easily found and highly ranked by search engines like Google, Bing, etc. Since search engines today are quite sophisticated in determining which sites show up on top of the search results, you need to know at least some basic information to keep your site and its content in tune with what search engines value in a website.
Below are the key factors in that should be incorporated into your website in order to be picked up and ranked higher by search engines.
KEYWORDS – These are the terms that people enter as a search query when they’re looking for something. You need to determine which keywords are relevant to what you offer on your site. To do this, make a list of every term that has something to do with your business or site topic and then narrow it down to the 10 most relevant. You will then insert these keywords in various strategic places in your site as organically as possible. If your website relates to a local business or organization, make sure the keywords also include your location (city or town).
SITE ARCHITECTURE – How well is your site organized and how simple is it to navigate? One of the many advantages of creating your site using Wix is that your site architecture is automatically optimized for search engines and you just have to choose a template that you like.
DOMAIN NAMES – Your website address should contain your brand name. Keep it as simple and as straightforward as possible.
SITE DESCRIPTIONS and TITLES – Each website page needs a description and title. The homepage title should be your brand name. Embed your business name in the title for each page, as well as a generic name for the page like “Services/Cookie Shop” or “Latest News/Cookie Shop”. Remember, the SEO title is not the name you give each page. It’s the “meta-name” that will be read by search engines.
Once again, this is so simple to do in the Wix website builder because you don’t need to know any programming to insert them in your page. Just follow these steps. Make sure you use some keywords in your description but not too many so that the search engines don’t consider your site spam.
Don’t forget to add descriptions and titles to your site and to each page individually
IMAGES – These are crucial to increase your ranking in search engines because a website with images and videos is ranked higher than one without. Be sure and use keywords in your image titles, and read this info on how to optimize your images for search.
CONTENT – This is an all encompassing term for text, images, videos and links published on your site. They key factor here is that at least part of your content should be updated consistently to show that your site is current and that you are keeping it fresh. You don’t have to update the entire website each time. Consider updating a photo gallery with new pics, or including a frequently updated “Latest News” page.
A latest news page is an easy way to add fresh content to your site
INTERNAL and EXTERNAL LINKS – Links within your website are internal and links that lead to other websites are external. Words used in your links (aka “anchor text”) can affect your ranking as well, so links should be intuitive and should help the user advance to the next logical or interesting page.
SOCIAL TOOLS and SHARING – Make your content interesting so that people will share it with others. Give your users the ability to share it on a variety of social media sites (Facebook: Like and Comment, Twitter: Tweet and Follow etc.). Here’s how you add social buttons on the Wix Website Builder.
Just one click and you have social buttons and comments on your site
LOCAL DIRECTORIES – Publish and submit your business and website in local directories (Foursquare, Yelp, Google+). Always use an identical format for your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) so that you will be easily recognized.
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