Optimizing your website content may seem intimidating, but we'll break down key areas below to help you optimize your website for both users and search engines. Have any questions? Contact Doug Lu or Nicole Jargstorf, Web Content Strategists, Office of Communications.
Content
Things to consider with content:
- Keep your content fresh, high-quality, and engaging
- Consider answering questions on your page
- Provide in-depth content with multimedia
- Research the keywords that people may use to find your content
- Incorporate these keywords into your content
Architecture
Things to consider with architecture:
- Help search engines easily crawl and index your pages while ensuring your pages follow a logical path
- Ensure your navigational structure is easy to understand for both humans and bots
- Consider adding an A-Z index page that links to all your keywords
- Build your keywords into your page addresses
- Optimize for Mobile first
- Consider adjusting the image sizes so that your site loads quickly on any device.
HTML
Things to consider with HTML:
- Build keywords into your titles
- Builds keywords into your headers and subheaders
- Alternative-text, or Alt-text for images improves accessibility and image SEO
Reputation
Gauging the value and relevance of your site comes down to the acronym EAT (Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness
- Be the expert in your given content type
- Be the go-to authority for a topic including site links, mentions, shares etc., for your topic of knowledge
- Establish trust with your audience in how your website operates year after year
Links
Things to consider with your links:
- Provide your audience with high-quality, trusted sites
- Seek links from equality high-quality websites to build your link-popularity
- Create meaningful links anchors where the text words are relevant to the destination of the link (imagine if the hyperlink was copied into a blank document and ask if the link would guide you to the intended destination as opposed to something like "click here"
- The more high-quality links the better!
Users
Things to consider with Users:
- Does your site offer a user experience that makes them want to come back and read more?
- Consider the intent of your user. Why are they coming to your page, and does your page meet the searcher's inquiry?
- Consider the locality (country, city, region, town) of your searcher and create a unique experience for them
- Know your users and engage with them through your content
Other general SEO best practices:
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Be sure to always use the H1/H2/H3/H4 text styling tools in Drupal (instead of simply bolding your headers). This helps Google to properly crawl your site and index the content
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Update your website content frequently (on all pages) -- older/stale content will negatively impact how you appear in search results
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Regularly publish news or blog content
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Avoid ‘keyword stuffing’, or over-using your keywords, as this can also negatively impact your SEO
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Wherever possible, avoid using PDFs (Google does not search PDF content)
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Try to keep image sizes as close to the displayed size as possible (this will keep your site running fast, which boosts your site’s performance and Google ranking)
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You may also use keywords in your social media posts, as Google picks up Twitter updates in search results
Sources material and additional resources
Search Engine Land: SEO Periodic table
SEO Made Simple: Where & How To Use Keywords in Your Content