In a digital world, business have pivoted from billboards and magazine ads towards embracing social media, digital advertisements, and organic discovery as fundamental parts of their outreach efforts.
Last week’s blog post and podcast episode covered the world of WordPress and why it’s the best website development platform in 2020. While website development and design is a major part of driving a business to digital success, filling your website with content written and designed with search engine optimization in mind allows “crawlers” – intelligent AI-driven analysis from search engines – to discover your website and rank it alongside other resources and business listings that pop up in search results.
Following these five tips will kickstart your website content and layout, giving your company a leg up on the competition when it comes to ranking higher in Google’s search results to drive traffic and build a solid digital presence for your brand.
Set Page Titles 
Setting page titles is a simple step that adds plenty of SEO power to your site! Adding your page’s title to the <title></title> tag, along with your website’s name, boosts both name and content discoverability. In our case, this would look like <title>About US | SeedSpark</title> to create About US | SeedSpark for the page title.
One Page, One H1 Tag
Each page on your website should have its own unique H1, or Headline, tag. Having this H1 tag and making sure that it is related to your page title confirms to the crawler that your website is a legitimate and reliable resource for information, improving your SEO and increasing your company’s reputation as a reliable resource for industry information.
Use Page Descriptions 
Page descriptions are brief blurbs that give more information about the topic or content that a page covers. While some might just gloss over this step and write it off as unnecessary busywork, crawler bots depend on this information for accurate search results. Putting in the extra effort to write a unique description – a piece of text generally under 320 characters – for each page improves the overall performance in Google’s search results, driving more traffic back to you.
Add Alt Text
Much like page descriptions, adding alt text doesn’t change much on the surface of your website. However, behind the scenes, alt text fuels discoverability by allowing your company to show up organically in image search results. Coupled with powerful page descriptions, alt text is an invaluable tool that redirects users interested in your industry directly back to you and towards the products and services that you provide.
Use Natural URLs 
Using natural, organic, non-GMO URLs is a golden rule in modern web development. Okay, maybe organic and non-GMO might be a bit of a stretch. However, using natural website URLs – addresses that make sense - simplifies your content catalog and improves the overall aesthetic of your website. For instance, "example.com/community/forum/subforum/2020/May/food/" is a bulky URL that is longer than it needs to be, confusing both visitors and crawlers while making it an unappealing link to share on social media. Instead, "example.com/forum/food" is concise and understandable, creating a better experience for your visitors and improving organic discoverability on search engines.
While there is an ever-evolving list of best practices in the world of web development and search engine optimization, these five tips provide a solid foundation to build on as new industry trends emerge and businesses pivot to better connect with an online audience ready and waiting to connect.
