How your website is built also plays a large part in SEO. If you are going to use a template based builder like WordPress, Wix or Squarespace, SEO is already a part of your website but the SEO information will need to be filled in for it to work properly. This post will discuss SEO as it relates to website structure.
Website Structure - Part 2
Template Structure/Page Structure
Whether or not you choose to use a template based builder to build your website, the structure of the page is important. Every page needs: a title and description, scripts should load in the footer if possible and not the header, text formatting should be have H tags counting down in numerical order, a minimum of 300 words per page for search engines to crawl, at least one image with alt text, and one link.
Mobile Friendly
A mobile friendly site is a website that can not only respond well on a desktop/laptop, but can perform well on a mobile device such as a phone (iPhone, Android, Blackberry etc.) or a tablet (iPad, Kindle, Galaxy, etc.). Search engines notice if your website is not mobile friendly and will push it down in results. There are two types of mobile friendly websites.
1. Responsive
A responsive will render the site differently and respond effectively depending on the screen size. This usually the preferred way to build a website as it is less work and more versatile.
2. Mobile Version
A website with a mobile version is essentially two websites, one that displays to desktop users and one that displays to mobile users. Reasons you might choose a mobile version over a responsive version could be either needing a different experience on mobile as opposed to desktop or having a very image/video content heavy website which drastically increases mobile load time.
Load Time
Load time is the time it takes to fully display the content on a specific page. Websites with slow load time will be pushed down in search rankings by engines. There are many things that will increase load time including: large images, video backgrounds, scripts loading in the header, slow server response time and more. A good resource to test your website’s mobile loading time in Test My Site https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/.
Final Thoughts
Building your website can make a big impact on SEO. Having the right template and placing all of the necessary information in the right place can make your website more readable and friendly to the user. The more friendly the layout is to the user, whether it be on their mobile device or desktop, the more likely they are to come back to your site. These tips can reduce frustration and clutter when building your site, giving you a clean layout that will improve your SEO skills.