Search Engine Optimization: The Two Most Important Things Your Website Needs

We can talk search engine optimization strategies and organic search engine optimization techniques all day, but one thing will always remain the same.

The two most important things to help you get found more often online and stand out from the rest of the sites in your niche are, in this order:

Good content
Good design

Good content that is user focused, information rich and valuable is the most important part of your website. Good content that is updated regularly is even more important.

The search engines first and foremost want to see that you are providing information of value on a regular basis. Consistently adding new content to your website shows the search engines that your site deserves to show up in the results because people need access to your newly updated content.

Good design that is user focused, easy to navigate, and clean is the second most important part of your website. Good design shows the search engines that you care about your visitors and that you want to make their experience on your site easy, useful, and enjoyable. Good design keeps the code clean and simple, places the main content no more than 2-3 clicks from the home page, and portrays a visual design that helps guide the visitor through the site.

With that said, here are a few tips to optimize your website content pages:

Make sure keywords appropriate to the page are in your title tag.
A short description (160 characters or less) of the page contents should be included in the meta description tag.
Your page headlines and sub headlines should be placed inside header tags.
Your page keywords and long-tail key phrases should be included in the meta keywords tag.
Integrate your keywords and key phrases into your content, especially at the top of your page. But make sure it is a natural integration into the flow of your content.

So, when developing your website, first focus first on smart, fresh content and great design. Second, focus on optimizing the content, image and links. Then, once your site is completely dialed in, focus on building massive amounts of traffic to your site.

Do you agree with my top two things every website needs? Let me know