Hello, here are a few things to keep in mind when programming your website for SEO purposes. Some of these suggestions are no brainers but some others may surprise you. If you find this useful to you in your work or if you have suggestions on how to improve this list, I would love to hear about. Please leave a comment.

Before programming a website it is always a good idea to have an effective SEO strategy. It provides a basis for which to set up each page and it makes for easier content editing in the future. A keyword list must be provided to the programmer for them to follow this structure. This keyword list will help guide the strategy per page as there will be a primary keyword to target and secondary keywords to also use throughout the site.

By making each page unique and keyword targeted, we will be effectively making each page an optimized landing page. This will increase the odds of being found because a search engine doesn’t always arrive at the home page. If each page is targeted, the viewer has probably found exactly what they were looking for and it will lower the chance of a bounce (quickly leaving the site without spending time reviewing it). This can only be achieved by making the content relevant to the keywords.

1. A website’s structure should be separate from the website’s appearance.

• Make sure to declare the values and properties of your tags in the CSS and avoid doing so in html.

2. Use the H1 tag once per page. Other important headlines should be H2.

• H3 and H4 are often ignored by crawlers as they are seen as less important.

3. Each page should have its own unique keyword rich title. Keywords should target only the content of the page.

4. A description tag is necessary on each page targeting the keywords for the page.

• Meta data should always be high on the page in the head tag to make it easier to be found by crawlers.

5. Meta keywords should be included next to the description and should be unique to each page.

• Although Google does not place high importance on the keywords, it’s more important with other search engines and directories. It also allows anyone who will be editing the page in the future to see what the targeted keyword strategy when editing content.
• Only a few keywords should be used per a page (3-4). They will be grouped as a main target keyword and supporting keywords.

6. Avoid using too many images.

• Slow websites have a higher bounce rate (people will leave the site without spending time looking through it).

7. Each image should have keyword rich alt tags.

• Incorporate a description of the image using the keywords for the page
• If page has several images avoid over-using the same keyword, refer to supporting keywords. Overusing the same keyword may increase the odds of being labeled as a spam site.

8. File names of each html page should use the keywords separated by a dash (-) not an underscore(_).

9. Copy contents should be keyword rich

• Be sure to add the keywords high on the page, and in the first few sentences of each paragraph.
• Often crawlers will only read a few sentences before dropping the page or adding it to the SERP (search engine results page)
• Avoid using the same content on different pages
• Avoid using keywords from other pages

10. Consider the order of importance a search engine places on a page when adding your primary and secondary keywords.  These vary in importance with different crawler’s but it is generally accepted that the page title will be the most important section to optimize.

• Title
• Description
• URL
• H1
• H2
• Copy Content
• Bold/Emphasized
• File Names
• Alt tags
• Keywords

We are Saba, a San Diego SEO Company dedicated to your online success. If you need help with web design, Search Engine Optimization, or Social Media Marketing, Call us today 866.937.1717