Basic Guidelines for a Friendly Search Engine Website

Tips for Creating an Effective & Efficient Website Homepage

1. The top categories of your website should be visible. Make sure that they stand out.

2. Include sub categories, which are relevant to the top categories on your website.

3. Your message and/or motto should be informative, engaging and memorable.

4. Users should know what your website is about on the Homepage.

5. Create content, which is unique & contains valuable information.

"My rule of thumb is build a site for a user, not a spider."

Dave Naylor.

Important Elements that you Should Consider While Planning your Website:

Your website is your gateway to reaching customers and gaining a loyal audience. There are two really important elements, which should be checked before the development and designing of a website. For starters, your website should be user friendly. Visitors and users should be able to navigate throughout your website with ease. Secondly, always keep in mind that your website will be essential in the way people will find your services and/or products.

The most important page on a website is the Homepage, as this will be the first page that visitors and users usually stumble upon during searches on different search engines. If your website's Homepage is designed in a user friendly fashion - it is more than likely that users and/or visitors will navigate through other pages of your website.

Navigation layout and/or design is paramount to the success of your website, as users are often put off by web pages that aren't user friendly. Arrange categories in a way, that will make it simple for users and for customers to browse through. Also, make sure that your website loads promptly, as slow loading website can be detrimental to your website.

Use Friendly SEO Urls:

On websites, create pages that are clear and that describe each topic, product or service. SEO friendly websites go hand in hand with the development and design of the website. Be sure to utilize SEO friendly urls.

• An unfriendly URL is a URL with irrelevant characters. Avoid using characters that do not pertain to the page's topic. An example of an unfriendly and irrelevant URL would contain characters that do not include the brand name or subject of the web page. Unfriendly urls, can also, contain characters such as:!,#,% and other symbols and/or letters, that do not pertain to your web page. Do not use these formats.

• An SEO friendly URL, typically has the topic or name of the page within the URL.

Keep these tips in mind when creating the different pages of your website. Friendly urls will attract more visitors and users, as these pages won't appear suspicious.

The Importance of Website Pages' Titles:

The title used for each page on a website is of utter importance for your website's success. Keeping it simple and clear usually is the best route to go. Titles on different pages of a website should contain a keyword, which you know users are searching for on different search engines.

The titles of pages on a website will appear on the website URL, as well, as in search engines. Titles should describe the content of the page. It is recommended for each document to contain a title tag.

Content for Websites - Use Unique and Relevant Keywords:

Before creating and adding content to your website, be certain that you've done thorough research on what your targeted audience and customers are looking for. For instance, you can utilize Buzzsumo to analyze the content that's being used on an array of topics and/or competitors. Find out about the latest trends and about topics that are being shared - this way you can stay ahead of your competition.

The Importance of Heading Tags:

Use H1, H2 and up to H6 headings for heading tags on content. Such will show Google, which texts are more important and what the topic is about. The heading tags will help rank your website.

Why Internal and External Links are Important for SEO:

INTERNAL LINKS -

Internal links are links that are found within your website. Internal links will help your users and visitors to navigate through relevant pages and topics faster. Adding hyperlinks to the content on your website will re-direct users to other pages on your website. Google follows such links to be able to track the associations of links to and from the website content.

EXTERNAL LINKS -

External links are links, which are found on other websites that will re-direct users back to your website and website pages. External links can also, be found on your website, which re-direct users and visitors to other websites. Google will follow these links, as these links can have an immense impact on your domain's rank.

For example, a link from Forbes magazine that links back to your website, can generate a significant amount of traffic, which will increase your page's visibility and authority. However, stay away from unethical SEO practices and shortcuts - such as - suspicious link building. Google will penalize your website if you are caught utilizing unethical SEO practices.

It is advised for you to use Ahrefs to analyze back links on blogs and competitors. Ahrefs will identify the amount of back links that website content has generated, social shares, organic keywords, organic traffic and lists of paid keywords.

Clear Calls to Action:

Call to actions are buttons or links that inform and persuade users and visitors to click on these buttons and/or links to do something else. Some examples of call to actions include:

• Contact Us

• Call Us

• Subscribe to My Email

• Buy Now

• View Details

All the above calls to actions will persuade users to take the next step.

Call to actions alert users in taking actions quicker. Furthermore, call to actions - also, helps with user-engagement and conversion rates.

What you can expect when you implement the above tips:

Implement all the tips that we have mentioned when developing or revising your website and surely, your website will be successful and fruitful. Cater and engage with your audience in all possible ways and you will notice an increase on the traffic of your website.