The fusionSpan Blog

SEO Best Practice Tips to Increase Your Website Traffic

By Adam Hinkel |February 20, 2020

SEO Best Practice Tips to Increase Your Website Traffic

What is SEO?

While online platforms like social media and paid advertising can help drive users to your website, the vast majority of online traffic is generated through organic search (i.e. Google). Therefore, it is important that your website appears when someone uses a search engine to look for content relevant to your site. This begs the question: “How do I increase my ranking in Google’s search results?” The answer is easy in theory, but difficult in practice – improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO is the process of increasing the amount (and quality) of a website’s traffic through organic search engine results. The basis for what defines “good SEO” is a constantly moving target, so there is no be-all-end-all for companies to boost their site to the top of search engine results. With that said, there are a handful of best practices that can be leveraged to help increase your ranking in organic search engines.

How Can I Improve My Website’s SEO?

Crawling in SEO is the process by which search engines crawler/ spiders/bots scan a website and collect details about each page: titles, images, keywords, other linked pages, etc.

Mobile-friendly design: According to a report published by Statista, the number of mobile searches worldwide surpassed the number of desktop searches for the first time, in 2018. Google puts a lot of weight on mobile-responsive design when crawling websites to determine how they should rank in their search results.
Quality content: Admittedly, Google’s quality guidelines are a bit ambiguous. However, there seems to be a theme around the idea of building websites for users, not for search engines. Although “quality content” is subjective and not clearly defined, keeping your users in mind during every step of developing your content is a crucial factor in driving traffic to your site (in general and through organic search).
Accessibility: Developing content with high-level web accessibility should be at the forefront of your SEO priorities. It’s important to consider the wide demographic of users that visit your site, even website viewers with conditions like color blindness or vision loss. Websites that comply with accessibility best practices will rank higher among organic search results. One example of these best practices is including descriptions of content like images or infographics using Alt Attributes. Assistive technologies (i.e. screen readers) rely on these descriptions to convey what is being displayed to users who may have trouble seeing your content.

AIt Attribute: The alt attribute is the HTML attribute used in HTML and XHTML documents to specify alternative text (alt text) that is to be rendered when the element to which it is applied cannot be rendered.

The alt atribute is used by “screen reader” software so that a person who is listening to the content of a webpage (for instance, a person who is blind) can interact with this element

Why is it Important to Follow SEO Best Practices?

The answer to this question may seem obvious – “to improve my website’s ranking on Google!” While this certainly is a desired outcome of using SEO best practices, you’re also providing a better user experience (UX) for your audience. The subsequent boost in the search results is a reward for having a high-quality website that gives your users what they want. Simply put, if you’re making your users happy you are making Google happy, and your site will be rewarded with a higher ranking in organic search results.

The techniques listed above are just a few ways that you can level up your website’s SEO. Google keeps their search algorithm under pretty tight wraps, so none of us know exactly what the recipe is for a perfectly search-optimized site. What we can do is try to provide the best possible experience for our users by considering what we would want (and expect) as users.

Adam Hinkel

Adam aims to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical teams as fusionSpan’s Digital Strategy Business Analyst. Prior to joining the fusionSpan team, Adam worked for The World Bank Group as a Mobile Application Developer. With an analytical mindset and a well-rounded knowledge of the software development lifecycle, Adam strives to render the highest level of client satisfaction, while ensuring the delivery of a product that suits the business needs of his clients. In his spare time he enjoys reading Sci-Fi & Fantasy books, hosting game nights with friends, and spending time with his fiancé and their rabbit, Milo.