10 SEO Tips and Tricks to Promote a Website

The SEO optimization of a website is done in two parts - on-page optimization and off-page optimization. The on-page optimization involves everything we do on the website in order to improve its value, usability, user-friendliness, look and appeal, reputation, and to promote it to the target audience.

SEO of a website is not just about selecting and putting the right keywords in meta tags, alt tags and website content, but it also includes the following things.

• Optimizing the website design and layout for attractiveness, size and user-friendliness.
• Using only relevant, unique and informative content on the website.
• Keeping website content fresh and updating it on regular basis.
• Optimizing website images, flash and JavaScript content.
• Keeping a simple navigation on the website.
• Interlinking various related pages with each other and all important pages to the homepage.

SEO Tips for promoting a website

Have a website theme

I am not talking about the design theme, but a subject theme that your website should follow. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a specific narrow subject, but you can choose a wide industry such as technology and then share articles and blogs about anything relating to technology. This will help you define a user-base and gives your target users an idea of what your website is about. Do not forget to define the type of services (information/products) you provide through your site.

Research and mention keywords

Perform a keyword research to find out the most beneficial keywords for your business/site and use them throughout the site (including site title, meta tags, post title, content, image alt tag, tagline, categories, etc.) and for off-page SEO purpose. If you are planning to create a new website in a completely new industry, be sure to do a keyword research to find out the things that are trending. Use Google trends, Keyword Research Tool and other similar tools for the purpose.

Select the right URL

If you haven’t yet selected a URL for your website, make sure to choose one with your brand name. Try including a small keyword in the URL, but do not make it too long. The website URL should be clean, beautiful and self-explanatory. Avoid using special characters, page ID, etc. When selecting the URL of a page or blog post, use simple keywords and do not make it too long.

Interlinking of pages

The interlinking of website pages is important for two reasons. It allows Google (and other Search Engines) to easily find and crawl your website pages. It also helps your site visitors find more information relevant to what they have already been reading. Many content management systems will automatically link your website pages. It is also crucial to link the important pages on your site to the homepage. Use keywords (both exact and long-tail) as anchor text when creating links.

Optimizing the site speed

Speed and page load time are some important factors that Google considers when determining the credibility of your website. High-definition images, use of flash and JavaScript, videos, music players, advertisements, and plugins are some of the things that add to the website size and make it load slower. Make sure to optimize all these things. You can use free tools like Google speed test to check the speed of your website and for recommendations for optimization.

Unique Meta tags for each page

Instead of using the same title and description for each page of your website, you should consider putting unique tags for each page, post and for the homepage. Each page of a site has different content and so it is natural to use different descriptions and titles for all pages and posts. Consider using a good SEO plugin, like Yoast SEO, for more suggestions about optimization of individual pages and posts on your site.

Image Optimization

Images are an important part of the website content. It is recommended to use good quality but low-size images on the website. Your site images should be relevant, unique and beautiful but should not affect the website size by much. Apart from the size, the images should also be optimized with relevant keywords in the image title, alt tags, and description.

It is very important to put a proper alt tag for each of your website images, as Google considers it to rank them for relevant keywords.

Use of headers

Use of proper headers in the content is important both for search engines and for website visitors. It helps Google easily understand different parts of your content in terms of importance. It also makes your content more attractive and easy to read. The header sequence (H1, H2, H3, …) is also very important to maintain. Do not forget to use your best keywords in content headings as well as in the title of the page.

Linking to other relevant websites

Linking to other sites will not benefit you in the same way as getting links from other sites does, but it is still beneficial for a few reasons. First, it helps your website visitors find more relevant content. Second, it tells search engines that your website is treated as an authority for good content and users trust it. You can include outbound links (to other websites) through a dedicated resource page, or in the sidebar in the form of a link list or blogroll.

Indexing your website in search engines

In the end, none of the above tips is going to help you if your website is not indexed in Google, so make sure that it is. Most search engines, including Google, will automatically add your website pages to their indexes according to the content, but it doesn’t happen always, especially when your website has some issue.

Check the robot.txt file to allow/disallow your website pages from getting indexed by search engine robots.

There are many other things, including redirects, inbound links, content, etc., that play a big role in the optimization of a website for search engines.