SEO is about much more than just content — optimization needs to take place across your entire website. Furthermore, SEO is not just keywords. Although keywords in articles and content are a crucial part of any SEO strategy, there are many other ways to optimize your entire site for search engines.
1. Use Keywords in More Places
Think about how you could include keywords in more areas of your site than just content. Important places include image alt text, the metadata for pages, and for the naming of individual pages.
Image Alt Text
One essential place is the alt text for images. Google has no idea what an image depicts unless it has alt text. Be as descriptive as you can using no more than 125 characters.
Page Meta Tags
Meta tags come as title tags and meta descriptions. They tell search engines what the page contains (and users, if they find your page through search). Include your most important keyword in title tags and one or more keywords in meta descriptions.
Page names
In addition to meta title tags, the page names themselves should contain the keyword you want to rank for.
2. Improve URL Structure
As you increase the amount of content on your site, URL lengths may increase. Unfortunately, short URLs are much better for SEO. When creating URLs for new pages, make sure to keep them short.
3. Make Your Site Secure
HTTPS has been a ranking factor for several years, but it was originally only a minor one. Since 2017, however, Google has been giving greater weight to security. Now, if your website is still using HTTP, you can expect lower rankings. Users may even see error warnings if they start to fill out a form on your site.
Plus, users are now more aware of the importance of a secure site. This means they will be less willing to provide you with their contact information if your site is using HTTP. This can lead to higher bounce rates, further contributing to poor SEO.
4. Implement Schema Markup
If there are elements on your website that search engines struggle to fully understand, these elements cannot contribute to rankings. With schema markup, you can tell search engines what the data means and how to index it.
Although schema is code, you can add the markup without any coding skills, thanks to online tools. For instance, you can use the Structured Data Markup Helper from Google to add schema to your URLs.
5. Update Your Site Design
If you created your website several years ago, it likely lacks many of the SEO elements necessary to rank today. Plus, if it feels outdated, user experience is diminished. A full website redesign may not be worthwhile, but you should at least make improvements to some key parts of your site.
The main thing to do is enhance your website for mobile traffic. In addition to ensuring that all your pages are mobile responsive, test your website on various screen sizes and browsers. There’s no need to have access to a wide range of devices — online tools can test your site for you.
6. Use Internal Links
Internal links are an important aspect of SEO. They form backlinks leading to other content on your site. This enhances the authority of these other pages, improves navigation for users, and keeps people on your site for longer — all of which are ranking factors. They also ensure that Google crawls more of your site.
Having said that, internal links only work if you use them just the right amount. Too many comes across as spam; too few are simply ineffective. You can figure out if you are striking the right balance by considering if:
- The links lead to relevant pages
- The anchor text fits naturally in the content
- Every page has at least one internal link leading to it
7. Remove Underperforming Pages
Not all SEO best practices are about adding to your site. You may also need to remove things.
A common misconception is that the more pages a website has, the better. The idea is that this shows search engines you have more to offer users and it gives you the chance to include more keywords. In fact, extra pages have no positive impact on rankings. They can, however, have a negative effect if they are poorly-performing pages.
Locate any pages on your site that have a high bounce rate, few views, and a low average time on page. If the page is important to your site as a whole, replace the content. If it is unnecessary, low quality, or similar to another page, just delete it and consider adding a redirect to a related page.
There are multiple ways to improve the optimization of your website that have nothing to do with content. To see optimal results, you need to use all of the above tactics, which may mean seeking the support of a small businesses expert. This also means constantly monitoring your website to find out where problems lie and making the appropriate changes.