How to Search Engine Optimize a Website

Learn the basic steps on how to search engine optimize a website to better promote your website on search engines. After you have checked the quality of your content, you'll submit an XML sitemap directly to Google through the Google Search Console.

What is Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is the process of structuring website content to be indexed by search engines. This makes it easier for search engines to determine what kind of content, business, product, service, or organization your website represents. When search engines can better index the content and intention of the website it can better match it with what users are looking for.

Create Quality Content

Optimizing your website starts with quality content. Each of your website pages should address a question your customers would ask about your product, service, or business. This can be the content on your website's homepage, about page, services page, and contact us page, or even your ecommerce store products. Essentially every page of your website can be optimized for search engines to help potential customers access important information. You can do this through the titles, images, and descriptions, you use for your website pages.

Creating a Sitemap

A sitemap is the map of your website. It is a layout of the contents of the website and where each item can be found in the website tree. This map is used by search engine bots to navigate your website to determine where its place in the index for the search results will be. To automatically generate a sitemap for your website you can enter the URL on the website here.

Submitting Your Sitemap

After you have created your sitemap from the website above you will want to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console to be indexed. You can submit your website to the search console here. You may need to verify some DNS records to gain control of the property (domain name) in the search console.