Website Optimization - SEO in 2017

When it comes to Optimizing one's website, there is optimized design, optimized content and post-production promotion.

Promotion, or the act of marketing your website, will be discussed in this subsequent post - How to Promote Your Website in 2017

In this post, we will focus on the two slightly conflictory goals in website design and optimized website content creation.

Simply, our website needs to please both human visitors and search engines, and we have two 'target audiences' for our marketing efforts. Striking the right balance with the focus of your onsite content is not easy.

As we look forward to 2017, the trend is clearly that these two needs will eventually become one. The search engines are getting better at understanding your content, and are increasingly giving higher ranking for websites that provide the best user experience.  

It is still measured in terms a robot would understand, like page depth, time on site, load time, bounce rate, etc. But those factors are being more heavily weighed by Google moving forward.

Lets break this down a bit..

The strategies you use to please a search engine are often compatible with strategies to please humans - great UX (user experience), great SEO. But this is only half the story to ranking well. 

A good way to address this challenge is to identify where the conflicts are, where the strategies do not align. 

Go about pleasing the human visitor with design and content. Then, move your attention to solving each of these conflicts you have identified. 

For example, It is always a good idea to network with your potential clients, so social media links should be prominently placed at the top of the website. Search engines happen to love social indicators, so we are all good, get it done.

On the other hand, people tend to hate language that is even remotely stuffed with repetitive keywords, so getting the right terms into the front-end content of your site is not easy. 

Optimizing the front-end verbiage with keywords for search engines while keeping the connection to the audience, maintaining the chosen 'tone' of your writing, is not easy. 

So, identify this specific challenge, and approach one page at a time with a compromise. 

In the back-end of the site, we have more flexibility to directly please the search engines, as much of the back-end metadata is invisible to the human visitor. However, it is crucial for the search engines to understand what your site is about in order to reward you with higher position in search results. 

The back-end data that is visible to the user, the url or schema markup for example, needs to be handled like front-end content.

Here is a short list of some of the most important SERP ranking factors for web design in 2017.

General Search Engine Optimization:

• Have a fast, dedicated server
• Fast load times, under three seconds for all pages
• Low bounce rate, with a goal of under 10%
• Page depth of three pages or more
• Time on site over five minutes per visit
• No Flash, frames, too much java, or other designs incompatible with search engine behavior.
• Have verified sitemaps for both pages and images
• Have google analytics installed and register with WMT (web master tools)
• Have a verified robot.txt file
• Have no broken links or redirection issues
• Have links to social media, owned properties (ie off site blog) and content distribution network
• Have mostly original content, no plagiarism 
• Don't have too much duplicate content
• Don't have toxic links to your site
• Don't over do your keyword optimization.
• Include enough front end text to please the search engines.
• Include exact google business profile info on the front-end, as well as in the back-end metadata
• Be optimized for any screen size, mobile, tablet, large desktops, etc. 
• On mobile, have simple navigation and fast load times under two seconds
• Have correctly formatted Schema markup (twitter cards, structured data, knowledge graphs, etc.)
• Register your URL five years into the future

Front-end keyword optimization for search engines, in order of impact on search result position (Depending on the complexity of your site, you will probably want to optimize each page for only a small set of terms.):

Keywords should be included in..

• URL
• H1 to H3 headings
• First few words of the first sentence of the first paragraph
• Internal links with keyword rich hyperlinks in first paragraph
• Internal links with keyword rich hyperlinks in body of text
• First sentence of first paragraph
• First sentence of any paragraph
• Bolded text in first paragraph
• Repetition to as close as possible to 5% saturation for most important singular word
• Repetition of two-word keywords
• Inclusion of long tail keywords
• Bolded text throughout
• Image captions
• External links with keyword rich hyperlinks to topically accurate owned properties
• Embedded in Schema Markup 

Back-end keyword optimization for search engines: Keywords should be included in.. 

• Title tag
• Meta decryption
• Keywords as H1 - H3 headings
• Image metadata

There are seemingly endless ways to optimize your site, but at some point, you are chasing your long tail.. You should see a majority of your improvement with the adjustments above. You can, and should measure how well this all is working for you, and continually adjust to get the best impact for your optimizing efforts.

Next up, we will discuss how to go about promoting this beautiful site of yours, once you have it generally optimized.

Tony Sternad
HabaneroMarketing@gmail.com
510-545-2054