Best SEO practices are the rules that web developers, marketers and website owners must follow to make it easier for search engines (especially Google) to crawl, index, and understand a webpage’s content. These best practices don’t necessarily guarantee your site will rank first in Google search results (it probably won’t), but following these basic rules can help your website stand out from the competition and improve its chances of ranking higher in organic search results.
The most important best practice of all is to use relevant keywords throughout your website’s content. Keyword research is an essential component of SEO and should be a top priority for any online marketer. By using relevant keywords, search engines can better understand what a page is about and display it in relevant search results.
It is also important to include your target keywords in your page title and early in the body of your content. The page title is displayed in search engine result pages (SERP) Best SEO practices in Brisbane and can impact click-through rates. Meta descriptions are also important for SERPs and can be used to provide a brief summary of your webpage’s content. For this reason, it’s important to keep them short and engaging.
Optimizing images for the web is another way to boost your SEO. This includes ensuring that your image file names contain keywords, keeping the image size as small as possible, and adding alt text for visually impaired users. Adding alt text is particularly important for ecommerce sites, as 27% of all searches are image-based.
Creating a sitemap is an excellent way to make it easier for Google and other search engines to crawl your site. It also allows you to organize your site’s content and structure in a meaningful way.
A sitemap is especially useful for a large, dynamic site or one that has many interconnected pages. A well-optimized XML sitemap can dramatically improve a website’s SEO and user experience.
Building a good portfolio of quality backlinks is an important part of any SEO strategy. Using tools like Ahrefs and Google Analytics can help you to identify the quality of your current backlinks and that of your competitors. High-quality, relevant links from authoritative sources can greatly improve your SEO. However, don’t spam your site with irrelevant links – this can actually hurt your rankings.
A good internal linking structure is another great way to boost your SEO. This is especially important for ecommerce websites that have a lot of product pages. Ensure that all of your pages are reachable through navigation links and that there aren’t any ‘dead ends’ on your website where visitors may get frustrated and leave.
Finally, it’s important to regularly update your website. Google is always looking for new and fresh content, and a frequently updated site will often rank higher in search results.