Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a key component in maintaining an online presence for your business. By definition, SEO is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring the site appears high on the list of results from a search engine. This is done by including the right information these programs are seeking. The most popular search engines used by people are Google, Yahoo! and Bing with Google being used 71 percent of the time.
Why is SEO important? Well, many customers these days use search engines to find the products or services they seek. According to a survey from Pew Internet, 92 percent of online adults use search engines to find information on the web. This includes 59 percent who do so on a daily basis.
Our web designers are privy to the importance of businesses to match this demand. SEO is an important tool to help your business show up among the top search engine results when a customer uses the right keywords. It is Google’s job to provide the most relevant search results for its users. Therefore, your website must work to prove its worth to Google.
What kind of things are search engines looking for? Here are a few of the most important details of SEO.
- Page title – A website’s page title is one of the most important ranking factors for a site. Think of this as the headline when your website pops up on a search engine. This title tag should be 60 characters or less and include a relevant keyword. The right page title will help your website stand out from a long list of other websites.
- Header tags – Header tags are built into the framework of your site to differentiate the various headings and subheadings on a web page from the rest of the content. These tags, known by designers as HTML header tags, help represent the different sections of web page content.
- Page description – The page description, also known as the meta description, is the information about a website that shows up underneath the page title in a search engine result. These descriptions are an introduction to your website and will determine whether a person decides to visit your page. An informative page description will greatly improve the chances of people visiting your site.
- Optimized URLS – URLs, or Uniform Resource Locators, are used to specify the addresses on the World Wide Web. An example of a URL is the text located at the top of your web browser that reads www.lackeydesigns.com. A well-written URL should be as descriptive and brief as possible. Keeping a site’s URLs relevant, compelling and accurate is the key to improving a site’s ranking.
- Alt image tags – The names of the picture files on your website have more of an impact on SEO than you might think. An alt tag is built into a photo to help search engines understand the information that is included in each image. This is a simple process, but it will do wonders for SEO.
The web people at Lackey Designs are well versed in SEO. We do not work with third party services for SEO, but instead keep the best practices in mind while working with your website. Our techniques will engrain your message deep inside the framework of your website to help it stand out by search engine standards. Feel free to contact us with any questions about SEO or our services.