What happens when you don’t know how something works or the definition of a word? You Google it, as in you search the word or phrase on a search engine such as Google and a couple of websites pop up below it. The only way to be a website that is on the top of a search engine is SEO which is also known as Search Engine Optimization. SEO will help you bring your website up to the top when a person searches up keywords that are close that what your website has to offer.
So we have gone over Search Engine Optimization as an example of a way to boost your website. Another important term that one should know about websites and how to make it better is SERP. SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page and this is a big phrase to know if you want your website to rank well. Let’s be honest here, if your website is not in the first page when someone searches for the keywords, your website is not going to be clicked on very much. Even the first page is a stretch, you essentially want your website in the top 5 websites on the Search Engine Results Page. So now you know all the little nicks and knacks about SEO and SERP. What is there left now? Well, there are still some things we have to go over such as the actual ways to improve your website ranking.
When doing research on website ranking and improving it, the same five or six answers keep coming up. The first way that I believe will help you rank higher is to publish relevant content. One piece of advice to achieve this is to find one keyword/phrase that users will search up that will directly link to your website. You could also use several key phrases instead of just one, but it would need to be relevant key phrases to each other. Key Phrases that are not similar will not work and will throw your SERP off. The second way to help your website rank higher is to update your content regularly. No one wants a website that has content from years ago that will not help anyone out. Search engines will recognize when a website is stagnant and will be ranked down for users benefits. The third way is to make sure you have metadata in your websites. Metadata is defined as information about the contents of your page. Three metadata’s that will benefit your website are Title, Description, and Keyword metadata. The fourth way is to make sure you website has click worthy data. Instead of just adding “Click Here”, actually put words that have to do with your website and that will provide additional key words to help with your search optimization. The last way that I believe is really important is to use alternative text descriptions, or alt tags. Alt Tags are really important and useful because it allows search engines to locate your page. It seems like this is really obvious and people already know about it, but believe me, there are people out there that are wondering why their website is not ranked and they do not have any Alt Tags. A honorable mention that is not included in the top five but should also be mentioned is that make sure your website is scrollable, and you don’t have to click on a lot of links to get to the end. Scrollable means that people are able to just read your entire passage by scrolling down the page and not clicking on the next button on the bottom.
It seems like this blog should be helpful for people that are wondering why their website is not ranked. Make sure you follow steps 1 through 5 and that will definitely help your website rank higher, if not get to where you want it to be.
Website Links
https://blogs.mtu.edu/webmaster/2016/04/best-practices-search-engine-optimization-and-usability/
https://www.mtu.edu/umc/services/digital/seo/
