In an age where most business happens online, not showing up in Google search results can really hurt you. While there’s no real shortcut to showing up consistently on web searches, there are a few quick fixes to get your site to show up on your potential customer’s search results with search engine optimization (SEO).
HTML Tags / Metadata
Important HTML tags include the title tag, meta description and meta keywords. Make sure each page of your website has appropriate HTML tags. The title tag of each page should be unique and relevant to that particular page. Title metadata is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser window and as the headline within search engine results. It is the most important metadata on your page. Description metadata is the description that a browser may use in your page search return. Think of it as your site’s window display. It should be a concise and appealing description of what is contained on the page. A good meta description will typically contain two full sentences. Keyword metadata is rarely used to calculate search engine rankings. However, you should already know your keyword phrases, so it doesn’t hurt to add them into your keyword metadata. As a general rule, try to keep it to about 3-6 phrases with each phrase consisting of 1-4 words.
Alternative Text Images
Ensure that most of the images on your website have alternative text tags. Adding alternative text to photos is first and foremost a principle of web accessibility. Visually impaired users using screen readers will be read an alt attribute to better understand an on-page image. Alt tags are basically descriptions for images. By adding relevant alternative tags to images, you are allowing search engines to recognize them, which will improve the likelihood of your page showing up in search results. Alt text will also be displayed in place of an image if an image file cannot be loaded
File Hierarchy
How simple is your HTML file hierarchy? Check to see if your website’s pages are logically situated and avoid too many unnecessary folders. For example: ‘NFL=>Teams=>PittsburghSteelers’ is a better folder structure than ‘NFL=>Teams=>NFCEast=>PittsburghSteelers’, because here ‘NFCEast’ is redundant and only serves to push the Steelers page deeper down the order. This complexity makes your site less likely to show up on search results for people searching for Steelers websites.
Sitemap
A sitemap acts as a navigational guide for your visitors as well as search engines. They help search engines find, crawl and index all of your website’s content and also tell search engines which pages on your site are the most important. Does your website have one? If not, then it’s time to put up a site map on your website. There are many SEO plugins that will help automate this process. Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and are just a few. Using a plugin will help automate the process as well. Whenever a new page or post is added to your site, the plugin will automatically generate a new sitemap for your site.
Publish Relevant Quality Content
Read your website content to determine its quality. Is your content written for search engines or actual visitors? Is it stuffed with keywords? Does it truly add value to your audience, or is simply there to fill up the page? Answer these questions and make sure it has value for your audience. Value for your audience translates to better search engine rankings. Quality content is the number one driver of your search engine rankings and there is no substitute for great content. Quality content created specifically for your intended user increases site traffic, which also improves your site’s authority and relevance.
