Irrespective of whether you use a content management system (CMS) platform to help construct a website, or if you create it from scratch in good old-fashioned hypertext mark-up language (HTML) the principles of search engine optimization (SEO) remain the same.
There are really three main divisions regarding SEO, and they’re mutually exclusive yet complementary to one another. In no particular order, they concern off-site factors, on site content and technical standards. The latter two often used to be limited by the operation’s capacity to invest resources into the site and its hosting servers, back in the early days of the internet. Fortunately, current technology offers the advantage of using an AI website builder, meaning that most SEO requirements are in template form, ready for you to simply add relevant content as per suggested instructions that are native to the platform.
Some SEO requirements can be followed by simply creating and editing website content, some by altering the set-up of a theme, and some by dictating the settings of the hosting company on which the site’s server resides. Let’s take a look at the most important factors below.
We’ll assume that the fictional website in question is called dogaccessories.com – as the site sells, you guessed it – accessories for dog owners (or, more accurately, their dogs!).
Black Hats vs White Hats
No matter how Google and other search engine providers use algorithms to rate search engine results pages (SERPS) – one or two crucial factors remain in terms of Golden Rules to follow. In short, don’t ever try to ‘fool’ search engines with (what you might regard) as clever tactics.
Whether you’re using white text against a white background to make it invisible to humans but legible to web crawlers; or trying to redirect content from other competitor websites – these are known as Black Hat techniques. They never work because you can guarantee that however clever you think you are, you’re no match for Google’s AI and the team of boffins behind it. So play nice and stick to the rules.
For interest, Black Hat SEO is so called after early silent film 1920s Western movies in Hollywood. These movies had the ‘good guys’ in white hats and the bandits and baddies in black hats so moviegoers could easily keep score of how many of each side were getting shot. Aren’t you glad you know that now?
Anyway, back to White Hats – the good guys – these are search engine optimizers who follow the rules and use industry-accepted guidelines to optimize a site as best it can be; crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s to appear on Page 1 of Google in organic search results. That’s the SEO professional’s Nirvana.
Black hats can (and almost always do) learn the hard way when Google completely removes their website from its index. Then a White Hat overhaul has to be performed, and a manual re-consideration requested via a Google contact form. Unsurprisingly it takes months. If you’re lucky. Or your website can be simply torpedoed and sunk deeper than the Titanic. You’ve been warned!
Content is King
Assuming that you’re the marketing agency or person in charge of dogaccessories.com – the first thing you’re going to think about is whether the domain name makes sense. About 20 years ago, when Google was in its relative infancy, one of the first places that the algorithms examined was the domain name, to see if it contained any keywords that had been entered by the searcher.
This generated a raft of businesses buying domain names that they thought would be appropriate. It made sense, and for a few years worked quite well, until Google got smarter and didn’t want the entire world’s websites to be called things like ‘RestaurantNearMe.com’ or LosAngelesCosmeticSurgery.com’. At that point, the domain name became secondary to the meta <description> and <title> tags, which became the first place that the web crawling algorithms indexed each and every day.
Indeed, the advent of social media made the world of SEO considerably more complex. Nowadays, it’s as important how many times you’re mentioned on Instagram as the domain name of your site.
But there still IS a good reason why your domain name should be called after what it does or sells. And that’s simple human memorization of domain names. So if you’re going to be selling dog accessories for pet owners, does it make more sense to call your domain something like AccessoryTradingLLC.com or dogaccessories.com? In essence – which name are people most likely to remember to type into their browser address bar?
Having decided on an appropriate domain name, the next step is to identify relevant keywords that you intend to use most frequently in your website. At a guess, common sense dictates that ‘dog leads’ might well be one key phrase that might be very common on your canine-centric e-commerce portal.
Keyword Research is Key!
But not so fast – it’s a common mistake amongst business owners to know ‘insider terms’ and assume that everyone else in the world does too. This isn’t so crucial on a dog accessories website because a dog lead might be called a halter, a harness or simply a lead. But one of the most common mistakes is that businesses know exactly what their products and services like to be called – but the public use different terminology.
For example, a small business might specialize in asbestos removal and disposal from buildings about to be demolished. In which case, the <description> tag of their index page might be (for best practice fewer than 160 characters) “Parker’s Asbestos removes dangerous asbestos-based construction materials prior to demolition – call us for best rates.”
But had Mr. Parker used a professional SEO services consultant, or a tool like Google Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest to find relevant keywords, he might have discovered something crucial. Keyword research could show that many more people search for the term “asbestos roof removal” than simply “asbestos removal” – thus, leaving out the word “roof” could lose Mr. Parker a lot of potential customers.
In short, when writing content, don’t assume that everyone knows exactly what your services involve. Explain what you do as if talking aloud to a not-very-clever 10-year-old, and you won’t go far wrong.
Optimize your Content.
It’s important to write fluently, and if using something like ChatGPT to help you create content, re-write it with a little ‘humanity’. Some AI-written descriptions are so obvious that it’s irritating. Nor do AI generated <tags> fare well with search engine algorithms.
Overall, ensure that your content, headings, meta titles and descriptions include keywords naturally. And avoid keyword stuffing. It never works. In effect, the best way to engage both Google’s algorithms and the humans you want to convert to customers is to produce quality content.
Like a good journalist might do, each product page should be composed as a kind of story to include:
· Who is the product (or service) for?
· What exactly does the product do?
· Where might a customer want to use the product?
· Why should they buy it over the competition?
· When do they need it? – now!
Then naturally sprinkle some keywords throughout the page content and you won’t go far wrong. Many online tools are available to analyze Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) frequency. You’ll have to Google that, as it’s way too complicated to explain here. But it’s about how often keywords should be used within an article and what might constitute ‘stuffing’.
Duke of URL
Leaving aside the 1962 US billboard number 1 hit by Gene Chandler, a user-friendly URL structure is crucial. URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) should include keywords that reflect the page’s content. Accordingly, it’s best to avoid ‘dynamic’ URLs – those with parameters or numbers, which are less SEO-friendly than descriptive, static URLs.
Try to avoid hyphens in domain names too. It’s seen by search engines often as a shabby way to try to hijack a competitor’s content. So if the domain name you seek – “dogaccessories.com” is taken, don’t think that you’ll get away with “dog-accessories.com” as it’s too similar to the previously registered original – and your hyphenated subordinate won’t do well in the SERPS.
It’s all about responsiveness.
When a website is described as “fully responsive”, it means that it provides a seamless experience across all devices. It might not (indeed, should not) look the same on a 26” iMac screen to an Android phone – but whatever device you’re viewing it from, if it’s responsive it works the best way it can. Menus will look different and page placement may change, but a website should always be accessible, regardless of the size of the screen you’re viewing it on.
Google nowadays uses “mobile-first indexing’, which effectively means that if the site doesn’t display and function correctly on a phone screen, Google will severely penalize your site in SERPS.
Of course, there’s a bigger political question here – you might not care if your site looks good on a phone. You might only want laptop & desktop users to read your blog from the shelter of their home offices. But the internet looks and acts pretty much how Google wants it to be. Whether you like that or not is your problem. There’s nothing you can do about it because Google effectively ‘owns’ the internet. And if you want to play, you’ve got to play by their rules!
The Need for Speed
Anything that makes your site load quickly is good. There’s nothing more irritating than clicking a link on a site to access a page and watching the circular arrow rotate on your browser for two minutes. That’s another sure-fire torpedo target from Google, if your site is slow to load, it’s going to be poorly ranked. Google wants using the internet to be a positive experience for everyone, which is why it penalizes sites in organic results if loading is slow. In short, fast sites rank better.
To increase loading speeds, try to compress images, use efficient code, and encourage file caching to improve page load times.
TAG! You’re It!
Meta Titles and Tags should be keyword-rich titles for each page, containing ideally about 50-60 characters. Meta Descriptions are best at around 150-160 characters. If you go over that, the description is usually truncated by Google with an ellipse, so that they rea…
Wasn’t that annoying?!
Putting people in the picture
Most importantly, when featuring images, Alt Text adds descriptive text to images, incorporating keywords where relevant. This helps with image search rankings and accessibility because blind people or the sight impaired can use screen readers. Also, if you title a photo ‘IMG_1234.jpg’ that means nothing to the poor person who needs to know that the image on the screen in front of them might be a pair of blue running shoes. Unsurprisingly, using the image <title> “blue-running-shoes.jpg” usually does the trick.
In summary
We’ve only scratched the surface here about best practice SEO, and of course, there’s really no difference between an AI-driven website builder and a site made completely from scratch with a WordPress theme or whatever. The AI-driven site will help you to fill in the blanks in the right places, but WHAT you fill in is the part that requires the skill.
Keywords, file titles, tags, PHP versions of host servers, responsiveness, incoming links, these are just a fraction of the things you need to know for successful SEO. At least an AI-driven website platform ensures that you are aware that something needs to be done about X, Y and Z. It’s really a case of how well you research what needs putting into those boxes on the screen that’s important.
Andrej Fedek is the creator and the one-person owner of two blogs: InterCool Studio and CareersMomentum. As an experienced marketer, he is driven by turning leads into customers with White Hat SEO techniques. Besides being a boss, he is a real team player with a great sense of equality.