People often ask us to explain what makes a good website. Whether we have a list of elements that a great site should have. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy, one-size-fits-all answer to this. As in many things SEO, the answer is: it depends. What kind of site do you have and what do you want to achieve? Who do you want to target? There are, however, a few best practices that help you get underway. In this post, we’ll list 7 elements that can help every site become a good site and a better search result.
Holistic SEO
The number one thing to keep in mind is something that we at Yoast advocate a lot: holistic SEO. Essentially, holistic SEO helps you strive to be the best result. This comes down to optimizing every part of your site on all levels, from satisfying user intent with your content to offering a stellar user experience. If you combine all these things in a solid SEO strategy, implement the enhancements and keep an eye on the results, you’re on the right track!
7 elements of a good website
Many things we deem important for a good website are hard to quantify. There’s a lot of talk about quality in SEO, for instance. Even Google has been saying for years that you should focus on the quality of your site and content. After every algorithmic update that Google implements, the answer for those who lost rankings is the same: it might not be your fault, because other sites might seem to be a better fit for this specific query. Nonetheless, you should work on the overall quality of your content.
People flock to the Search Quality Raters Guidelines for input on how to do that, looking for any guidance at all. Now, you shouldn’t take everything that Google says as gospel, but in this case, they are right. You should improve your content — always! Make sure to look at user intent and the behavior of your potential customers. Periodically redo your keyword research. And check your niche, what’s happening in your part of the market? By continually evaluating your SEO strategy, you’ll get a grip on the changing market and find new opportunities.
1. Your website satisfies user intent and has a clear goal
Do you know your audience? Do you know your business and what it is you contribute to this world? Why should anyone come to your site and do business with you? It’s not because you think you have an awesome product — that just doesn’t fly anymore. “Build it and they will come?” Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. You need to have a clear mission and goal for your website.
If you want to succeed, you need to know your audience. You have to uncover everything about them. You can probably find out what they say they want, but is that the same as what they really need? Does your product or service merely offer a possible solution to a problem or does it make your customer’s life genuinely better? Are you selling a drill or a hole in the wall?
Your story has to be right. It has
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This article was written by Edwin Toonen and originally published on SEO blog • Yoast.