You often hear the term “SEO friendly” or “SEO friendly website,” but what does this mean, and why do you need one? How can an SEO-friendly website help your business grow?
These are the questions I will try to answer in this post by avoiding technical terms or advanced SEO practices and theories.
What Is An SEO-Friendly Website?
An SEO-friendly website makes it easy for search engines to crawl and understand the structure and content. This helps the website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and increases its visibility to users searching for relevant topics.
The most important characteristics of an SEO-friendly website are:
1. It has Unique titles and Descriptions for all pages
Each website page (including the homepage) has a unique title and description.
The titles are between 60 and 65 characters, and the descriptions are approx. 160 characters. Titles and descriptions accurately describe what the page is about without being keyword-stuffed.
2. Well formatted URLs
Permanent links or slugs (a webpage URL) are descriptive, all lowercase, and separated by dashes.
3. It loads fast
Neither people nor search engines want websites that are slow to load. On the contrary, fast-loading websites are SEO friendly (meaning they have an advantage in ranking algorithms over slower websites) and generate more user interactions (sales, newsletter signups, contact form submissions, etc).
4. It has unique content
Content on the website is not found anywhere else on the web. All pages have unique and useful content. This means a website cannot be SEO-friendly if its content is copied from other websites.
5. Includes images that are optimized for search engines
Search engines prefer text that’s the truth, but you also need to have images to your pages because people like it, it makes your content more interesting, easier to read, sharable etc.
When you do so, ensure that the images are optimized for size and set a meaningful image filename and ALT text.
6. Pages have a meaningful structure
A web page usually has the following elements:
- Header
- Breadcrumb menu
- Page Title (that’s the H1 tag – there is only one per page)
- Well-formatted text – text is separated into several short paragraphs with subheadings
- Author information
- Footer
There are of course many other characteristics that make a website SEO Friendly, you can read them here: The Ultimate SEO Checklist.
Advantages Of An SEO Friendly Website
Something that most CEOs, small business owners, or new webmasters don’t easily understand is why you need an SEO-friendly website and why you make an effort to make your website friendlier to search engines.
Well, the reasons are a lot, but those you need to know are:
1. Increase in organic traffic (that is, traffic from search engines)
As expected, an SEO-friendly website will get you more traffic from search engines as it will likely run higher in the SERPS (search engine results pages).
If you consider that most people who use the search box tend to select one of the first 5 results, you can understand the importance of SEO.
2. It will make your website user-friendly
SEO is not only for search engines; good SEO is also for users. Applying the principles of SEO to your website will make it easier to use, and this will enhance the user experience.
3. It gives you brand credibility
Users are more likely to trust websites (businesses) found on the first pages of Google, Bing, or Yahoo. This is good for both brand awareness and brand credibility.
4. It is cost-effective
An SEO website will drive targeted traffic 24/7 without spending money on PPC or other forms of online advertising. While there is a cost to reach that point, the long-term benefits are bigger.
5. It helps you understand what your most important customers want
SEO drives quality traffic, and analyzing the behavior of those users (how they enter your website, what they click, how they leave, what they like, etc.) is a great way to understand what your customers want and adjust your website or products to match their needs.
6. SEO is even more important on mobile
A mobile-friendly website with good rankings on mobile searches can get more customers and traffic than websites that are not mobile SEO-friendly.
More and more users are using their mobile phones to search for information or products while on the go. It is important to be on top of the search results; otherwise, you lose customers to competition, especially those searching for local products or services.
Conclusion
An SEO-friendly website has certain features and characteristics that help search engines understand what the website is all about, increasing the chances of achieving better rankings in the SERPS.
The most important advantage of having an SEO-friendly website is getting more targeted organic traffic from search engines.
