A website that is search engine friendly will maximize your social media plan
Search engines are able to decipher the kind of experience a website offers through clues that come from how visitors interact with the page.
BY ELIZABETH BREEDLOVE
Social media, email marketing, paid advertising, your website and more all work together to create a web presence that will ideally draw in leads and convert them to customers. What does this mean for inventors using social media to promote their products?
Although sharing your content on social media is important, it’s one small part of a digital marketing strategy. In fact, it’s especially important to ensure your site is in great shape to complement your social media efforts.
A good site is built on search engine optimization best practices. SEO means building your site in such a way that Google and other major search engines can easily crawl it to understand what it’s about, and in such a way that users have a great experience. Google and other search engines are able to decipher the kind of experience a website offers through clues that come from how visitors interact with the page.
I’ve outlined some things to consider as you’re building or updating your website to ensure you’re giving your visitors—and search engines—the best impression using SEO best practices. These SEO tips for inventors should help you grow your site traffic and your business.
Install an SEO plug-in. Plug-ins such as Yoast SEO, the All In One SEO Pack and The SEO Framework handle many of the technical aspects of SEO: creating site maps, optimizing metadata, applying noindex, nofollow and disallow tags, and more.
If this sounds like gibberish to you, that’s OK! Just know that these plug-ins make it easy to optimize different aspects of your site so that the search engines are able to crawl it and understand its content. Once you pick a plug-in that works on your content management system, there are many tutorials online that explain how to set it up to help your site rank better on search engine results pages.
Reduce your site speed. Make sure all pages on your website load quickly. Data show that most people won’t wait for a page to load; if it doesn’t load immediately, they’ll go to a different site. A few easy fixes to increase load speed include reducing image sizes and doing away with redirects wherever possible.
Be sure your website is mobile friendly. The exact data vary depending on the source, but nearly all sources agree that most social media usage is done on a mobile device. On top of that, more than half of all Google searches are done on a phone or tablet.
For this reason, it’s crucial that your website is mobile friendly. Fortunately, Google makes it easy to determine mobile friendliness! Visit search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly and enter your URL. If the tool deems your website not mobile friendly, make fixing it a priority.
Make sure your site is secure. It’s crucial that your website is protected with HTTPS, even if it doesn’t handle confidential communications. HTTPS protects both your website and your website’s users. If you’re uncertain how to enable HTTPS, ask your developer. This is a key piece of building a high-performing website and shouldn’t be overlooked.
Use keywords in your content. Keyword research may be one of the most important parts of a well-optimized website. It’s important to understand what people are searching for so that you can ensure users find your site.
Start by determining one primary keyword or phrase for each page on your site. Quite a few free tools online help with keyword research, but Google’s Keyword Planner is a great place to start.
Once you’ve determined your primary keyword for each page, you can begin to turn these into related “long-tail” keywords. For example, the primary keyword for this article could be “seo tips” and a long-tail keyword could be “seo tips for inventors.” Once you have these keywords determined, you can begin to write or edit copy that includes them. This copy is what Google will use to determine your site’s content.
Create good title tags and meta descriptions for each page. The terms “title tag” and “meta description” refer to the text on the search engine results page that shows the title and description of each page. Your SEO plug-in will have a place for you to set title tags and meta descriptions for every page on your website. This is a great place to include your keyword, but it’s also important to write enticing copy that will draw in visitors. Don’t force in the keywords if they don’t fit.
Use short but descriptive URLs. Data show that pages with short URLs tend to rank better, but keep the URL descriptive enough for both the user and the search engine. For example, a URL that ends in “/seo-tips-inventors” is better than “/seo-tips-for-inventors-to-use-on-their-websites.”
Include internal and external links. Make sure you link to other copy on your site throughout your site, but also link to other sites. Make sure any sites you link out to are high quality and relevant to your own content.
Fix all broken links. Broken links create a bad user experience. Not only do your visitors not like a negative experience, neither does Google. There are quite a few paid and free link checkers that will crawl your site to find broken links. Once you’ve identified them, go through and either remove the link or change it to content that exists.
Optimize all images with image alt tags. Adding alt tags to your images is incredibly easy, and if you aren’t sure how to do it, a quick Google search will give you instructions for your specific content management system. Make sure that your alt tags are descriptive and include your target keywords. This will help you rank higher in Google Images.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by this, not to worry. The internet is full of great resources that make SEO tips easy to find and understand. If you’re unsure where to begin, start with the resources at hrefs.com or moz.com. Soon you’ll be well on your way to a site with more visitors!