Building a SEO Ranking Capable Website needs these three following considerations: Website Tests, Contents, and Structured Data. Before reading this article, I strongly recommend reading What is SEO and why you NEED TO KNOW first.
1. SEO Ranking Tests on Websites
Simply put, a website with SEO Ranking capabilities it is a website that passes various tests using Google’s testing tools. Google provides a plethora of testing tools, and passing these tests means the website has a basic SEO structure.
If the content is the same, which website do you think is easier to rank: one with a structure score of 90 or one with a score of 30?
Apart from the structure, having a user-friendly backend can quickly optimize SEO data for the website. If the backend is convenient for optimization, it can naturally improve management efficiency and increase traffic growth from search engine optimization.
Are Google’s SEO Performance Metrics Important?
If you had asked me a few years ago, “Is website speed important for SEO?” I would have said that speed have a significant impact on SEO, but it’s enough to refer to Google PSI. I thought the stability of the website is more important.
But if you ask me now, I would strongly recommend improving website performance and speed (user-perceived speed) because, I’ve realized over the years, the speed is comprised of various factors such as Next Input Delay (NIP), Cumulative Layout Shifts (CLS), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and such, and these all together determined the performance and the speed of your website.
According to Google’s official Page Experience document, these metrics are now officially listed as “ranking factors.” Ignoring this PageSpeed insights (PSI) trend will only lead to a gradual decrease in ranking in the future, just like websites that didn’t prioritize RWD.
Are URL Optimization and Custom URLs Important?
Much of the website optimization structure information comes from Google’s “SEO Starter Guide”, which emphasizes the importance of “static URL optimization“, “custom URLs“, and “URL hierarchy“.
Optimizing URL hierarchy and incorporating keywords into custom URLs are key points in Google’s SEO Starter Guide. We still consider this important and recommend doing it. Optimized URLs can be clearly displayed in GA, SC, and various analysis software, rather than being a bunch of incomprehensible program parameter URLs. Professional websites always have optimized URLs, and the website backend (CMS) must allow for custom URLs to make search engine optimization signals more apparent.
Does SSL Affect Website Ranking?
The answer is “yes”. It is confirmed that SSL affects ranking. Seeing a large number of websites installing SSL shows that once Google decides to give good scores to SSL, we can only follow Google’s logic, as Google holds more than 90% of the market share. We have to follow Google’s standards and install SSL.
Creating a Sitemap for Google Indexing
There are two ways to submit a sitemap: one is to create a sitemap for Google to automatically fetch, which can be a page of links or a list of links in the footer section of the website. The other, more efficient way is to create a Sitemap.xml and submit it to Google Search Console (GSC).
The purpose of Sitemap.xml is to actively tell Google, “My website has been updated, come and crawl it,” which saves time waiting for Google’s crawler to visit the site. Sitemap.xml can be generated through various sitemap generators, then placed in the website directory and submitted to Google Search Console (GSC).
Submitting the Sitemap earlier can lead to earlier indexing, exposure, clicks, and ranking.
2. SEO Ranking Contents
Among the three key points of SEO ranking factors, the most important is “website content”. Company introductions (about us), latest news, and product introductions are rarely updated. If you want to operate SEO effectively in the long term, you must build an “article system” to continuously update website information. By arranging articles and providing valuable content, visitors can “linger” on the website, increasing the “session time” and reducing the “bounce rate.”
Blogs and FAQs are two of the most common SEO tools, allowing for effective stacking of various content. Especially for blogs, they are crucial for SEO, and a standard blog format is essential for efficient strategy implementation.
3. SEO Ranking Structured Data Markup
Are Structured Data Markup important for SEO Ranking? The answer is “very important.”
The purpose of structured data markup is to help Google display more recognizable search results. If structured data can help your website appear higher in search results or in different positions, it can increase the exposure of your website.
Google’s search results now include not only website content but also images, videos, summaries, shopping, ads, knowledge, etc. Some search results are automatically extracted from website content by Google, while others are achieved through structured data markup.
Structured data markup helps Google understand the content attributes of a website more easily, improves the click-through rate, enhances keyword ranking, and is one of the important tasks in search engine optimization.
Do robots.txt and noindex Affect SEO?
The settings of robots.txt and noindex do not directly help with SEO ranking factors. However, if set incorrectly, they can prevent search engines from crawling and indexing data on the website. It is crucial to set them correctly.
You can use robots.txt and noindex syntax to restrict the crawling or indexing by search engines. While restricting search engines has no direct relation to SEO, if it can make the content indexing of the website more consistent, it indirectly helps with SEO optimization.
Conclusion
Even though I have spent my whole career in digital marketing, I consider myself as a marketer, my main focus has always been SEO and Websites because they have critical impact to my marketing efforts.
If anyone ever says they know web development but doesn’t know SEO, I highly doubt it counts as knowing web development. SEO and SEO capable Website is the foundation of digital marketing.
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