search engine optimization – Iceberg Web Design

A Beginner’s Look at SEO

iceberg — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 14:00:56 +0000

If you do anything on the web, you should understand the basics of search engine optimization, often called SEO. Because there are so many small details that go into good SEO, it may seem overwhelming. Thankfully, you don’t have to master it. You just need to understand what the components are and why they contribute to a positive experience for the people who search for and visit your website. Let’s take a beginner’s look at SEO.

Quality Content written for your website user, not for search engines

Quality content isn’t for the bots sent out by search engines to crawl your site (How is that for a mental image?). It’s for the readers of your website. After all, if your readers don’t see the value in your content, they won’t ever return to your site, recommend it to their friends, or share it on social media. Quality content is written in an interesting way with the information that your readers want. Consistently offering your readers quality content is the best way to increase your readership.

Help Google find your content

You will want to make your wonderful content easy for Google and other search engines to find so that when readers search a topic which you have written about, they can find it on your site. The best way to do this is to submit a sitemap to Google for your website. A sitemap tells search engines about new or changed pages on your site.

Links to your site from other pages can also help people find your site. Building relationships with sites related to your site can be beneficial for both parties. Linking to one another’s sites can help readers find relevant content and help Google see where your site fits in among the sites on the worldwide web.

Describing your page’s content

It’s important to choose a title that accurately communicates the topic of the page’s content. Sometimes content creators try to be more clever than true, leaving both readers and search engines baffled about what they will find when they open the link. Because of this, it is important that each page has a unique title as well as a unique keyword. This helps search engines know how a page is distinct from others on your site. Avoid using lengthy titles that may not be seen as matching a user’s search query. Also, avoid “stuffing” keywords into your title tags.

Meta Tags

One example of important coding is your page’s meta tag. It summarizes what the page is about for search engines (hence, readers, as well). It could be a sentence or a short paragraph. As a tag, it is placed within the element of your HTML document.

Google might use description meta tags as snippets for your pages or Google may choose to use a relevant section of your page’s visible text, particularly if it does a good job of matching up with a user’s query.

It’s also important to secure your site with HTTPS

No doubt your hosting service has talked with you about HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), since it is a premium product that costs extra. It’s worth it, though.

Users expect a secure and private online experience. HTTPS provides this protecting the integrity and confidentiality of data between the user’s computer and the site three ways:

Data sent using HTTPS is secured via Transport Layer Security protocol (TLS). This provides three key layers of protection:

Encryption—keeps conversations safe from eavesdroppers and those who would steal the user’s information.
Data integrity—protects data from modification or corruption during transfer.
Authentication—proves that your users are communicating with the intended website. This builds user trust.

Regardless of the content on your site, it’s important to safeguard your users’ connections to it.

A Beginner’s Look at SEO Includes Optimizing Your Images

Over 20% of all U.S. web searches happen on Google Images. Without proper image optimization, you’re wasting a valuable SEO asset.

Images should be formatted as either PNG or JPG images.

PNG: These files are larger but produce better quality images. They also allow for transparency so are often used for logo files.

JPEG: These are lower quality but don’t take up as much space, which is an important factor in how quickly your website loads.

Another way to reduce the bloat on your website is to compress images before uploading them to your website. You can use a graphics program for this such as Photoshop or Gimp. There are also some WordPress plugins that will allow you to optimize your images.
Use original, unique images to add value to your site. Original images also protect you from a copyright infringement lawsuit. When you use an image that you didn’t create yourself, make sure that you have the legal right to use the image in the way you intend to.
Make your images mobile-friendly, meaning they automatically resize for different screen and device sizes.
Use keyword-rich, descriptive file names as well as alt tags for images. Alt tags describe the image (briefly) so that if the image can’t be viewed, whether due to a disability or because the image won’t load, the user and search engines know what the image contains.

Hiring an SEO Expert

You may want to consider hiring an SEO professional to audit your pages. An SEO expert can save you valuable time and improve the visibility of your site on search engines. They can improve the structure of your website and offer technical advice on things such as: hosting, redirects, error pages, and the use of JavaScript. They are also skilled in keyword research and content development as well as much more!

If you’re considering a site redesign or planning to launch a new site, it’s the perfect time to talk with an SEO expert. They can help your site be search engine-friendly from the bottom up. They can also improve an existing site. Contact us today to find out how we can improve your SEO.

The post A Beginner’s Look at SEO appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

How Your Website Code Influences Your Search Ranking

iceberg — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 15:35:07 +0000

Anyone with a website has heard the term, “search engine optimization” (SEO). But how do you achieve it for your site? There are many things that go into making your site appealing to readers and the bots that crawl the web, indexing relevant pages and ranking them for Google and other search engines. Have you ever considered how your website code influences your search ranking?

If you own a website, you probably view SEO as a way to influence your search ranking. At the same time, search engines like Google prioritize the experience of the user. That’s the goal of the various factors they look at as they rank pages. If you keep that in mind, the way that website code influences your search ranking will make a lot more sense.

What is Website Code?

Code is the set of building blocks that make up a web page. Have you ever looked closely at the code that makes up your favorite websites? All you have to do is go to a page, right-click on the page in an area where there is no image. Then, click on “view page source” in the dropdown menu. Go ahead and try it now. To most people, it would look pretty complex. Let’s examine a few components of this code to see how they influence your search ranking.

Title Tags

If you walked into a library and none of the books had titles, it would be a terrible experience trying to find what you were looking for. Likewise, if they did have titles, but the titles didn’t accurately reflect the contents of the book, it would be frustrating. You would likely go to a different library.

Just as titles are essential to books, HTML titles are essential to your web pages. They’re the most important HTML signal that search engines use to understand what a page is about. Bad titles on your pages are like having bad book titles. The keywords in your title tag should reflect the content of your web page. If the content of your title tag is deceptive to users (intentionally or simply due to poor website coding), Google will penalize your page in its search ranking. It is so important to search engines that pages are accurate and descriptive, that if they aren’t, Google will change them.

Meta Descriptions

The same keywords or phrases you include in your title tag should be in your meta description. If you are coding your own website, start the text with and end with . This tells search engines the topic and keyword that your web page is about.

Honest and unique Meta descriptions for each page on your site are a must. If readers go to your site based on the description, but then what they find doesn’t match, it will have a negative effect on the user experience.

The Meta description is a lot like the synopsis on the back of a book. The title tag is the heading, and the Meta description describes the content. Just like the limited space on the back of a book cover, your Meta description (which includes your target keywords) should be 160 characters or less.

How does a Meta Description influence your search ranking?

A skillfully written Meta description will help you rank well on Google, but it will also sell and encourage readers to “click” on it when it shows up on a search engine result page (SERP) with the keywords the user searched for in bold, catching the user’s eye. Both can result in additional clicks to your site.

It’s important to understand that having a Meta description tag doesn’t guarantee that your description will actually get used. While having made it more likely that what you prefer will appear, search engines may create a different description based on what they believe is most relevant for a particular query.

Header Tags <— (This is a Header Tag)

Header Tags help readers navigate your content more easily. For example, you would give the main headline an H1 tag. Relevant subheadings follow with an H2 tag. They identify key sections of a web page, reflecting the logical structure (or outline) of a page. Including keywords in your header tags gives search engines a clue regarding what a page is about. This can increase the chance of appearing in searches for those words.

Links

Links are essential for SEO. Together with XML sitemaps, they help search engine crawlers locate and index web pages. The following guidelines will help you create links that are more search engine friendly:

They contain the keywords you want users to follow.
They should be blue (and underlined)—these act as visual cues to the user that the text is a link. Without this formatting practice, it will be difficult for the user to recognize and click on links.
Avoid making links all uppercase or lowercase characters
Don’t give generic instructions within your links such as “more”, “read more”, “click here” and “learn more.” Users identify and understand links and therefore it is not necessary to tell users to click them.
Set up cross-links internally and from other websites.

The Need for Speed

Users typically spend between 10 and 20 seconds on a web page unless the content grabs their attention. Now imagine how quickly users will leave a web page if that content takes very long to load!

https://storage.googleapis.com/twg-content/original_images/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks-01-01-download.jpg

Faster sites create happy users and speed is becoming more important to users every year. Google has even started including site speed in web search ranking. This is a crucial way in which website code influences your search ranking.

Larger files created when JavaScript (JS) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) embed code in HTML files, make them slower to load. It can help to externalize the JS and CSS files and fetch the code whenever required. Compressing these files will make them smaller and thus faster to fetch.

Check out what a couple of Google webmasters have to say about the concept of speed on #askgooglewebmasters

How your website code influences your search ranking is complicated

If you want to increase your search ranking, contact the professionals at Iceberg Web Design. They have the experience and knowledge needed to take your website to the next level.

The post How Your Website Code Influences Your Search Ranking appeared first on Iceberg Web Design.

The Absolute Basics of Optimizing Your Website Content

iceberg — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 17:02:54 +0000

It’s no secret that search engine optimization (SEO) is highly technical. There are on-page and off-page, keyword research, white hat, black hat… The list goes on.

So how do you rummage through the jargon? By taking it back to the basics and focusing on your website content.

Why Is SEO Such a Big Deal?

Google, the search engine that has 90.46% of the search engine market, receives 63,000 new searches per second. For each new search, Google must deliver the best content available online to users. It uses over 200 factors to choose which content should rise to the top. To help satisfy these factors, we use SEO or search engine optimization.

Through SEO, you’re able to deliver your content to potential customers, thus generating qualified leads for your business. In fact, 57% of B2B marketers say that SEO generates more leads than any other marketing initiative. But, when 75% of people never scroll past the first page of the search engine, we must help our websites gain critical visibility. That’s where SEO comes in.

Back to Basics: 3 Things You Must Do to Optimize Your Website Content

You must optimize for search each piece of content you create for your website such as service pages, blogs or articles. Whether you’re an SEO beginner or seasoned expert, there are three things you should always consider first.

1. Understand the “Why” Behind the Search

When a user visits a search engine and enters a query, they’re searching for a specific type of content. For example, “best cat food” and “best cat food for kittens” are similar, yet totally different in their intent. Use this intent—the “why” behind the user’s search—to optimize your website copy.

Think about the keywords you want your website to rank for. Next, consider what a user might want to find in the search results after entering those keywords. Finally, create content that fits. Using our cat food example, a user searching for “best cat food” is probably looking for reviews of the best cat food available on the market.

2. Place Keywords in Specific Places

Speaking of keywords, you must use them in the correct places. In the past, it was common for website owners to flood their copy with keywords to try and gain higher ranks. Now, search engines think of keywords as clues to the copy on the page, not the whole. Start by placing your target keywords in:

Your title: Whether a web page or a blog, always add your target keyword into the title.
Your meta descriptions: A meta description summarizes the web page’s content for the reader and the search engine. Make sure to add in your target keyword.
Your H1 headings: The H1 heading often appears on a web page or blog post as the title of the page or the most important text. Add your keyword here for emphasis.

3. Focus on Quality & Readability

While technical SEO tactics work, they’re no substitute for high-quality content that’s easy to read and understand. To write the best content for your website:

Discover what your audience wants: It’s important to write all website content for your audience specifically. Do some research using social media or customer surveys to discover the content your audience wants.
Solve a problem or share your insight: During your research, if you discover common questions or concerns about what you offer, write about them. Solve a problem for your reader or offer your insight about a topic that matters to them. This helps build trust between you and the reader, inspiring them to come back for more.
Focus on readability: Use short sentences of no more than 20 words and paragraphs of no more than 3-4 sentences. Use readability tools such as Hemingway to keep readability scores at or below an 8^th-grade reading level. Also, use headings and bullets to create scannable content your audience can consume quickly.

It’s Time to Help Your Audience Find You Online

High-quality and intentional content mixed with a bit of keyword placement is a great place to start, but there’s much more you can do to help boost your website in search. To learn more about SEO and content optimization, send us a message.

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