Rank Fast with these Topical Authority Tactics Ep.589
In this podcast episode featuring SEO Specialist Matthew Bertram, the focus is on demystifying Topical Authority in SEO and providing actionable…
Link Building
SEO and Web Design: How to Build a Website That Ranks Ep. 599
Build SEO-friendly websites by integrating SEO from the start of web design, not after, covering mobile, speed, sitemaps, metadata, URL structure, and indexable content to rank higher in Google.
Key takeaways
- Integrate SEO from the beginning of web design, not as an afterthought, or the site may tank in Google after launch.
- The first Google search result captures around 28.5% to 38% of clicks, making top positions critical for meaningful traffic.
- Mobile-first design is essential because Google's spiders now only look at the mobile version of a site.
- Image alt tags, compressed file sizes, and descriptive file names help Google understand content and improve rankings.
- URL slugs should include the focus keyword for each page and be kept short, avoiding filler words.
If anything you would take away from this is you need to have SEO as part of the process from the beginning, not as kind of a check the box at the end.
About this episode
Topics discussed: What is SEO web design? Why is SEO web design important? 10 things to Optimize for Web Design and SEO Walking the line between SEO and web design
Questions this episode answers
What are the most important elements to optimize when building an SEO-friendly website?
According to this episode, the 10 key elements are mobile friendliness, website speed, sitemaps, readability, image file names, alt tags, website navigation, URL structure, metadata, and indexable content. SEO should be built into the design process from the start, not added after.
Why does website speed matter for SEO?
Website speed is a Google ranking factor and directly affects user behavior. Forty percent of users are likely to abandon a site that does not load within three seconds. Factors hurting speed include large file sizes, too many plugins, bloated JavaScript, and shared or unbalanced web hosting.
How does JavaScript affect SEO and site crawling?
JavaScript requires Google to download, render, parse, compile, and execute code before indexing, which takes significant time and crawl budget. Code errors and client-side rendering can cause indexing issues. Both SEO and development teams need to be aware of these tradeoffs when building a site.
Why does the first position in Google matter so much?
Studies cited in this episode show the first search result gets roughly 28.5% to 38% of all clicks, while the tenth result gets only about 2.5%. Traffic drops sharply after the top positions, so ranking outside the top three means very little organic traffic reaches the site.
In their words
If anything you would take away from this is you need to have SEO as part of the process from the beginning, not as kind of a check the box at the end. It doesn't work well that way.
Matt Bertram
Google only wants to rank the best websites to prevent its own users from being impacted by poor websites.
Matt Bertram
40% of all users are likely to abandon a site if it doesn't load within three seconds.
Matt Bertram
Terms defined in this episode
- Crawl budget
- The limited resources Google allocates to crawling a website. Sitemaps help conserve crawl budget, and heavy JavaScript usage consumes more of it, slowing indexing.
- Alt tags
- Descriptive text attributes added to images that tell Google what an image depicts, helping images appear in search results and improving accessibility for screen readers.
- URL slug
- The part of a URL that identifies a specific page. Each slug should include the page's focus keyword and be kept short, without filler words.
- Core Web Vitals
- A set of Google page experience metrics related to load speed, interactivity, and visual stability that factor into search rankings.
Full transcript is being added.
This episode answers
Matthew Bertram
AI keynote speaker · Owner & CEO, EWR Digital · President, ModalPoint
Matthew Bertram is an AI keynote speaker, creator of DIG™ (Digital Information Governance), and owner and CEO of EWR Digital. He helps energy and industrial leaders win visibility in AI search (GEO and AEO), is President of ModalPoint and CMO of the Oil & Gas Global Network, hosts The Best SEO Podcast, and has authored eight books including LLM Visibility. More about Matthew Bertram.
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