Whether you are designing a new website or redesigning a current one, it is vital that you make search engine optimization SEO a central focus and goal of your web design project.
There is so much fog out there in the SEO industry and many scam artists are making great promises of first page placement in Google, but they are nothing more than false claims.
In reality, good SEO that get’s results takes hard work. There are no short cuts to good SEO. That said, there are a few basic SEO best practices that are vital and foundational to any solid SEO strategy. Below is the “must have” SEO summary list.
Top to do tips for effective search engine optimization
- Write strong content with keywords. Know the words that people are using to search for and find your service or product in Google. You can use Google’s Keyword Tool to help you discover the top searched keywords for your industry.
- Make sure your web pages’ title tags are filled with accurate and popular keywords that describe your products and services.
- Fill in your website’s keyword and description meta tags. There has been debate whether to use these, but Google does look at them so it cannot hurt to make sure these are being used properly.
- Link building. If your content is valuable, people will link to your website. Incoming links are important votes that tell Google you have a site that people consider valuable and important.
- Make sure there is little or no JavaScript in your main navigation menu. JavaScript can make it difficult for Google to find and index the pages of your website. Instead, you can make sure your web designer builds your navigation menus using CSS and no JavaScript at all.
- Logical and easy navigation. Make sure your website is structured properly so your pages are easy to navigate.
While this SEO check list is not exhaustive, it does cover the main starting points of a good SEO campaign.
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Global Link is a Portland web design and SEO company serving web design clients in Portland and the nation.