6 Website Design Features to Improve Your On-Site SEO

On-Site SEO is the foundation of your website and directly impacts its ability to communicate effectively with customers and search engines, these 6 tips will guide you to success.

Staying relevant has become more challenging with the evolution of the internet. Simply being listed in online directories is no longer enough and developing SEO strategies to get ahead of your competition has become more difficult.

Search engines and social media platforms are constantly changing their algorithms. Search engines aim to provide relevant local content to users while social media platforms aim to show users what their connections are doing. This may result in your business’s page losing traction in search results.

If you are concerned about falling down the ranks and aim to improve your listing, here are 6 website design features to improve your on-site SEO:

1. Content

When you start looking into improving your On-Site SEO strategy, you need to look at the content you’re putting out.

Content drives SEO rankings more than any other aspect of your pages. 

Producing high quality and relevant content is essential to ranking higher in search engine results. To produce high-quality content, you need to improve your SEO copywriting skills. When you are writing web content, you need to consider a number of things that make the content relevant.

Firstly, consider your keywords. How are users searching for a site like yours? By including these keywords and keyword phrases in your content, you are allowing for more opportunities to be found. Placing keywords should not be obvious.

Keywords should flow in the text, as though they are part of the original sentence. In addition to placing your keywords correctly, you need to consider how your content is formatted. Using proper formatting for headings, subheadings, and paragraph text can attract users better and might hold their attention for longer.

2. Uniqueness

Google and other search engines flag sites that are too similar to other sites. While you and another business may specialize in the same thing, it is important to make sure your content is completely unique.

During the SEO copywriting stage, check that what you produce doesn’t infringe on plagiarism rules. Use a plagiarism checker to ensure your content is completely unique.

Uniqueness is not just limited to the content you produce for your page. Your website should have a completely unique look and user experience. This is especially important if you happen to be the lesser-known service provider in an area.

Providing a user experience too similar to that of your competitors can result in customers believing you are a sub-contractor for the larger brand, or that you are a scam organization. Uniqueness will not only result in higher search engine rankings but is also more likely to attract and maintain your customer base.

3. Code bloat

Code bloat can lead to a slowdown in load time, or take up unnecessary resources for your site.

Code bloat is inefficient and can slow down the search engine’s response time in producing your site as a result. When a keyword is searched, the search engine tries to find the relevant keyword on relevant sites.

Tim Walsh works as a web developer and digital marketing advisor for a research paper writing service that provides custom essay papers, thesis, and dissertation to students. In his expert opinion, by having unnecessary coding, or code bloat, it is harder for the search engine to locate the unique keyword on your site and this may lead to your site not showing in results.

He suggests avoiding code bloat by reducing JavaScript and CSS in the coding. Rather, stick to HTML in your coding to make it easier for the search engine to scour the pages.

If you need to use script or CSS files, add them as external files in order to reduce the information that the search engine needs to navigate through. Reducing code bloat also reduces chances for coding errors.

4. Separate pages for separate keywords

An essential method to ranking higher for a keyword is to use a unique URL for that keyword. When you offer a service or product, it is important that each individual keyword or keyword phrase has its own web page.

Part of a successful SEO strategy in 2020 includes providing users with convenient experiences. When you have a new web page for each keyword, you make the user experience convenient.

An advantage to each keyword has its own page is that users are more likely to find what they are looking for. When they search for that particular service or product, your website can rank higher in the results.

What’s more is when they click on your link, they are likely to be taken directly to the page for the product or service they searched. This convenience can allow for a seamless customer experience that will keep them happy and more likely to return.

5. Keyword titles

Title tags are an important tool used by search engines when they aim to determine the content of your page. The title tag will appear in the tab or browser title bar and can give the user an exact idea of what that page is about.

While one of the older strategies for title tags was to include the company name, this is becoming insufficient and outdated. Rather, it is becoming more essential to put keywords and phrases into the title tag to improve your SEO rankings.

While the title tag may just seem like a convenient way of letting the client know which window or tab is yours, it also helps speed up the search time.

When the search engine can identify page content based off your title tag, it is likely to pinpoint and scour your page faster. The title tag should be fewer than 60 characters to align with the search engine’s space restrictions.

6. Footer links

Linking between web pages is an important SEO tool. Your web page may be linked to others in a similar field of interest.

Alternatively, your website might be linked to others through a blog, or perhaps backlinked to sites that recommend your services. Ensuring your backlinks are legitimate and reliable sources is one way to improve your on-site SEO. Another way is by making use of footer links for every page of the site.

Footer links make your site easier to navigate. You can also use footer links as an anchor for keywords. When writing the links for each footer text, anchoring a keyword or keyword phrase increases your site’s SEO ranking.

The keywords appear in search engine results, but do not hinder the page’s navigation or accessibility. Besides, the anchoring of keywords within a URL results in a reduced likelihood of a page being flagged for a lack of unique content.

To sum up

Successful SEO can be difficult. While much of the SEO strategy is trial and error, it can be developed and evolved for success. Testing out your current SEO can take time, but it will highlight your successes and shortcomings, giving you opportunities to adapt and improve.

When improving your SEO strategy, be sure to use keywords and keyword phrases effectively, as this makes it easier for the search engine to find your page. It is also important to avoid code bloat while maintaining uniqueness within content and site design.

Offering separate pages for separate keywords makes it easier for customers to navigate your site, as do footer links for every page. Footer links also provide another opportunity to embed keywords that can improve your page’s ranks in search engine results.