I wasn’t planning to write this blog but couldn’t stop from writing. Last Friday evening was pleasantly surprising, I got a call from my client and he said how happy he was from my service and he will always recommend me whenever he could. He told me that his site were showing for some keywords in Page #1, which surprised me as I wasn’t tracking them all. Previously for those keywords his site were not even in page #10.
Just before handing over the site, I had mentioned that I had best in terms of web development and done the best On Page SEO I could.
I am not trying to pitch myself here but instead I would like to share how rewarding it could be if you follow best practices. Just to be specific I am talking about SEO best practices and a good On Page SEO optimisation can boost your result in SERP (Search Engine Ranking Page).
SEO these days are quiet challenging, but nevertheless the benchmark for the best practices should never be left over. Google will reward you for writing unique and relevant content, but these are out of topic discussions from this post. So let’s get back to the topic straight on.
I am hereby listing some of the things YOU MUST DO if you are the site owner.
1.Google must know Your Site Exists
Sounds bit funny but Yes there are something you must do as site owner to verify your site. It’s always good to these two things.
1.1 Verify the site using Google Webmaster tool
Its good idea to create a webmaster tool as it provides so many analytical data about your site in terms of user behaviour.
Frist of all verifying your site is critical. You can either verify your site using meta tag or by downloading and uploading the html file provided and uploading on the root folder.
This will in terms let google know about the ownership of the site.
1.2 Installing the Analytics Tracking Code
From Analytics tool, Google provides tracking code written in JavaScript. It should be copy pasted before </head> tag.
Following these steps definitely helps Google to verify the ownership of the site.
2.Sitemap should be added in the Webmaster tools
Letting Google know about the site content is quiet a key thing to succeed in SEO. Even if your site have 5 Pages or 100 Pages or 1000 Pages, never forget to add the sitemap.
Sitemap for the website can be added in the Webmaster tools. Personally my favourite is the XML Format.
3.On Page SEO
On Page SEO can be a vast topic but I will hereby list the most important points to be considered or not be left out.
3.1 Right Page Title
Page Title is very critical for ranking that particular page. Good page titles will have keyword or phrases that you are targeting to rank. One caution to be taken is there is the limitation in the length of the page title, i.e. between 50-60 Characters.
3.2 Better Page Description
Page description can be inserted as meta tag and describes what page is all about. It will be displayed as snippets in the SERP results. A short and precise page description helps in better Click Through Rates.
3.3 Header Tags
A Page can have header tags from h1 to h6. It’s in the order of importance. Normally a page can have unique h1 tags whereas a page can have multiple h2, h3 to h6 header tags.
3.4 Good Navigational and Silo Structure
Good navigation structure will help user to find or navigate to content with ease.
Whereas proper siloing structure will let Search Engines know the relevancy of the pages and content of the website. Setting up Breadcrumb Navigation does help the cause.
3.5 Internal Link Building
Internal links are also consider links, although not valued as external link, setting up internal links is considered best practices of SEO Optimisation.
4.Going Mobile is important, Responsive Web Design is a better solution
Since the number of visitors using mobile devices, mobile devices can’t be neglected. Choosing a separate design for mobile user might be an option.
But personally I think Responsive Web Design is a better solution, as one website works for all strategy is much better idea in terms of cost, maintenance and above all Google recommends Responsive Web Design.
On conclusion, I am pressing on to stick with Good Practices. Even using some very basic and easy implementation, sometimes result can be much better. Defiantly being a web developer, it was quiet a morale booster for me to get a call from client and appreciating my work. I hope this article will help you in some way. Cheers.
