Do you pay heavily for SEO services that do not work? Are you finding difficult to check whether your website is optimized for SEO? You are going to learn website auditing here. After that, you can tell whether your SEO expert is actually working for you or not.
One of the biggest worries of the newly created restaurant website is search engine ranking. This is usually the case when restaurateurs outsource site creation to somebody who knows next to nothing about SEO optimization.
One of the methods that help you know when your site is SEO optimized is website auditing. Anybody can audit his website, and you do not need to become a technical guru to use the techniques enumerated here.
SEO optimization is the key to success of any website irrespective of the type of business you engage in. This is indispensable for any type of activity. If you want your site to occupy the top position on the search engines, you have to learn when your website is SEO friendly, and when it is not.
All you need to do is to follow the instructions provided to you here and achieve that without depending on anybody. You should know, however, that improving site SEO is not a simple job, it takes a lot of time. Even if you hire a consultant, ensure that he devotes the needed time for the job.
11 things to help know when site is SEO optimized
It is pertinent to learn how the search engines actually work. Tens of billions of web pages are on the World Wide Web, because of this searching through the web would be extremely difficult without using algorithms like Google, Bing and others. These are powerful search engines, and they are able to source data from the World Wide Web.
They sort and rank them within a short time and make them readily available to the users. The two are indispensable, and internet can be meaningless without them. Google and other search engines perform this task through four processes, which include indexing, crawling, retrieval, as well as ranking. The process is such that when you type something in the search bar, the search engines would bring out pages of corresponding results and these ranked according to their relevance, importance, and so on.
The first step in the search process is crawling, when you search through the search engines, they find all results, which match those things you are searching for. Search engine bots or crawlers and spiders would begin the search from selected sites, those they consider reliable. By connecting to the links contained in the websites, they would be able to locate other sites related to it.
This process, the bots would crawl through billions of websites and pages that are interconnected. They check through the HTML code of the images, texts, and videos on the web. The spider would pay specific attention to the parts of the code like the meta tags, links, alt text on images, as well as italic text, bold and so on.
They look for relevant keywords, which would be relevant for the indexing. The spider would also develop an index for every webpage it crawled. The crawling process is always ongoing. Spiders would always come back for updates from previously visited websites. If updates were noted, it would save that as the latest version.
During the indexing processes, huge database is generated, and they are arranged in order of importance or relevance. Search engine would further classify the database based on their keywords, themes, as well as categories and other parameters. It creates a library in the process.
The outcome is presented in different levels and they can be stored temporarily, or they are installed permanently. Sometimes the information can be saved in a specialized index, and so on. Whenever you use the search engines, it does not mean that it is going to search through the entire web; rather it is going through databases containing such sorted information. This is the process search engines deliver their search results.
Whenever, you search through the search engines, it would pick its search results from databases, and arrange them according to the semantically closeness of the documents to the search query. The results are presented according to their relevance and importance.
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Relevance. This refers to the extent to which the web contents relate to what the searcher is looking for. The more the web content has the information and keywords used by the searcher, the better position it would occupy in the search results. Moreover, the relevance of the web content can increase if other web links in the webpage use the related anchor texts. Relevance is the key factor in determining whether web content would be included in the SERP. If it does not contain the relevant keywords, it may not be included. - Importance is determined by citation, and this can be measured by the signals and links qualities, especially those emanating from social media sites. Web content importance determines the position it would take in the search engine results. It determines whether it would occupy the first position or second, third and so on in that order. In doing that, search engines take into consideration the trust and authority exhibited by various websites.
Relevance and importance are the key factors that determine the ranking order adopted by the search engines while delivering their search results. In determining relevance and importance, search engine algorithms depend on different factors, which are analyzed below.
- Frequently used words on the page
- The availability of the query in the site URL, Meta tag, title, and first sentences of the site
- Searched keyword synonyms available in the web content
- The site quality
- Domain level usage of keyword
Page displayed at the end of the search is called the SERP that is the search engine result page, and it is always displayed in the descending order. This means that the best would take the highest rating the topmost position, while the worst would take the least or bottom of the search results position.
1. The fundamental SEO Tools
Though there are hundreds of tools available to SEO practitioners, the most reliable of all tools include the Webmaster tools, and Google Analytics. Without these, no meaningful SEO optimization is set out, so find them out, and set them in your website. It is necessary you check whether it is available on your website and ensure that it is added properly. Its presence would make your site SEO friendly.
You would see many SEO experts reveal that the best tool they would always use is webmaster tools, or Google Search Console. If these are not active in your site, then it means that the so-called consultant is actually cheating you. Several great tools are available with the webmaster tools and they include the following:
- Knowing when the search engines are running smoothly in your webpages, and way to correct errors.
- It tells when your site has a malware attack or when it is hacked
- You can learn about the positioning of your website
- It equals reveals various keyword data
- You can determine whether your site visitors actually used the appropriate keywords in reaching out to your site
There are several other interesting things about your website that you can discover.
The fastest way to check this is using Chrome, click on View>Developer>Source Code and check for meta-name=”google-site-verification”
Google analytic is an important tool because it lets you study your site performance. This service is made available free by Google, and it is meant to help new site owners know the performance of their website. It shows your sites statistics, as well as visitors behavior when they visit your website.
Therefore, it is necessary that your site is monitored by the analytics, and setting this up is not difficult. Load your website and check this through analytics.js or ga.js.
It is better to do this with Google Chrome browser. To access this click View>Developer>Developer Tools>Network. Check the initiator space where you can see ga.js or analytics.js.
2. Speed
Some SEO practitioners still believe that loading heavy pages could affect search engine crawling of the webpages, and because of that, they fear that your site could be cut off from mobile searches. To check the speed of your site, you can still visit Google Analytics and check on Behavior>Site Speed>Overview.
The best tool that you can use to overcome the challenge is Gtmetrix.com. The site is going to advise you on what you can do to enhance your site performance on both your mobile and desktop devices. The site speed depends on how good your site looks. The average load is not expected to exceed a few seconds. If you visit the site, you would learn how to improve the site performance, especially speed. It ensures that your website is optimized for speed.
3. Mobile Friendliness
These days, mobile devices are the king because it facilitates marketing processes more than other devices. It has made it people for webmasters to carry out businesses through their smartphone, tablet, and so on. Because of this, it is important that websites have mobile access. Though you can open your website through mobile devices, it can assist you check for Mobile Friendly Websites. Google offers this important tool.
4. Accessibility of your Website
All the websites adopt the same method when it comes to accessing your website. Your site should be found easily, and it should not be difficult to crawl it. This is possible because your site is in HMTL. This is regarded as the standard language of the internet. For instance, flash files may appear easier, but you would discover that it would be more difficult to be analyzed by these search engines. It is important that when you hire experts to work on your new site, make sure that he or she does not rely on old technology.
5. Health check by the search engines
Search engines can also check whether your site is optimized for SEO and they do this through a process called health check. This is an important way of ensuring that your website is optimized. You can inquire from the search engines about your site health, as well as your SEO status. You can determine whether all your webpages are showing on Google by going through the site: <yourdomain.com> search and this would inform you whether all your pages are indexed or not.
Furthermore, it is important that you use the latest version of the Google cache. If you want to observe your cached site, then it is important that you search for it using Google. To do that, click the green down arrow and click cached.
Finally, it is important that you conduct a search using your brand name. If you are finding it difficult to ranking your website, then it shows that something must be wrong with your site.
6. Checking your Keywords
Perhaps the most significant part of the SEO is the keyword. If you use the right keywords in your content, Google would be happy with it. For the keyword, it is important that you search and research the right keyword that can attract your target audience. Above all, it is important that you insert the keyword in the right places in the content.
You can always look for the best keywords that can generate traffic to your website by checking the business owner’s niche. When you discover them, it is important that you use them on your own site. This is one of the ways of ensuring that your website is keyword optimized. Many people may not actually know that they are optimized when you use this option unless you reveal that to them. Insert the keywords in the right place; use good sentences with correct grammar. Google would reward you.
7. Duplicating Content
When it comes to SEO optimization, duplicate content is a bad omen. If you check, you would see that in most of the sites, there are duplicate contents. This is not good, because it would make it hard for search engines to bring traffic to your website.
Most importantly, you must ensure that your web content is not a version of another web page. If it does, it can hardly generate traffic because visitors can be easily directed to another version.
Moreover, you must check whether you have https, which could be duplication of http pages. Check this through the search bar. You may be surprised that SEO experts do not consider this aspect. To check if there is duplicated content, you can use this free tool called Siteliner.com to check it.
8. Meta Tags
Another useful means of checking whether your website is SEO optimized is to use the Meta Tag. Ensure that you have the HTML tag in your website. This would be good, because it helps the search engine with the correct content information. Though the tags may not be seen by the users, browsers and search engines know them.
The title tag is the most important aspect of this Meta tag information. The title is such important that is considered as one of the best five factors that determine site ranking. Because of this, it is important that you are creative with your title, and you have to make them descriptive, short, and catchy. Ensure that you use the correct keywords.
In the same way, the metal description is equally important. This is the summary of the content. This should not be long. It must have one of the keywords in them, especially the main keywords.
Furthermore, it is necessary to know whether your site has Meta Robot Tag. When this is available, it simply tells the search engines that your page should be searched, or that it should not search it and that it has to follow the link or not to follow it.
The best way to determine this is going to the Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool.
9. URLs and internal links
In selecting your URL, you must ensure that it is concise, clean, descriptive, and unique. Furthermore, you must ensure that it incorporates the main keywords. When the internal links are there, it informs the search engine that the page is important. It is not necessary that you fill it with lots of internal links.
You may consider structuring the internal links. It is easy to check this through Google search console. Finally, the external links are important and you can have plenty of them as you can afford. You can get backlinks as well.
10. Sub-domains
This is another important factor to consider. This is the minor domain of the main domain. The sub-domain is very important because it can improve SEO optimization. Learn more about the importance of sub-domains.
Learn more about the use of subdomains.
11.Sitemaps and Robots
Your site looks like it is a big map, and the name of the map is sitemap. This is the comprehensive listing of pages on the website, and this is given to the search engines and this helps them to index it. You can determine your sitemap by visiting the search consoles. Check Crawl>Sitemaps, and know whether this has been submitted or not.
These are the basic things, which anybody who wants to optimize your site for SEO must do. This is not easy, because it can take months for the on-site and off-site SEO to become perfect. Because of this, allow expert enough time before assessing the work.
Most importantly, you can improve your restaurant SEO by engaging in the best practices in your restaurant business.
