We’ve got to be honest with you: while there are plenty of advantages to a small business buying a website blueprint, it does take a bit of work to make it SEO friendly.
Luckily, the work’s not hard, and there are those out there who can do it for you.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s a fancy way of saying something is set up to be more easily recognized by search engines like Google. The better your visibility in search results, the more likely you are to get traffic on your site. So you definitely want to make sure your site is as SEO-friendly as possible. Unless, of course, you don’t want visitors to your site.
How Does SEO Work?
Search engines like Google send out bots across the internet, scanning each and every site they can, collecting information as they go. All that website info goes into an index, like a giant phone book. Algorithms (a set of digital rules to be followed) analyze all the pages in this index and take into account hundreds of factors to determine the order in which pages would appear in search results.
If you can tweak your site to account for some of those factors, you’ll find that your site performs better on search engines. Trouble is, with website blueprints, there isn’t as much room for tweaking as with custom sites.
What Can Be Done? Blogs!
You’ve still got a few options to improve your SEO score. One of the factors those algorithms look for is whether your site is consistently updated with fresh content. The best way to do that is to post regular blogs to your site.
You can choose to blog about whatever you wish, but it is highly advisable to stick to subjects surrounding your industry. Your blog should also be filled with keywords or phrases that you would expect your customers to Google when searching for a service you provide. We go into this in much more detail on a blog of our own on the subject.
Make It Mobile-Compatible
As of January 2021, there were 4.66 billion active internet users around the world! That’s nearly 60% of the global population. Of those, 92.6% accessed the internet on a mobile device. The odds are pretty good that many of your customers will try to access your site from their smartphone or tablet, meaning it’s a good idea to make sure your site looks as good on their device as it does on your PC.
Many website blueprints are optimized for mobile devices as well as desktop PCs, so make sure you’re taking advantage of that. Especially since the mobile-friendliness of a site will help those algorithms decide where your site ranks.
Avoid Avoid Duplicate Duplicate Content Content
A big no-no in the world of websites is duplicating content. The Google Search Console Help Centre is pretty clear about what qualifies as duplicate content. It is “… substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.”
A common duplicate content faux pas can usually be found within e-commerce product descriptions. You may have noticed other websites featuring generic product descriptions provided by a supplier that are used for multiple products on the site. That’s a big red flag for those search algorithms and will negatively impact your chances of getting to the top of that search page.
Additionally, having duplicate content like product descriptions carries the potential of dissuading your customers, who could view it as lazy or unprofessional.
You’ll Never Be an SEO Expert
At the end of the day, if you want more traffic to your site, you have to have an SEO-friendly website. But, unless you make it your full time job, you’ll never become an SEO expert. There are so many factors at play! However, if you stick to these guidelines, you won’t be doing your SEO score any harm.
Then again, when it comes time for you to really dig deep into SEO optimization, there are experts out there who can help. Reach out to SIVA Inc. to explore all the SEO tips and tricks our team of experts have up their sleeves!