₦airaland Forum

USE HTTPS ENCRYPTION ON YOUR WEBSITE BY PURCHASING AN SSL CERTIFICATE.

Most websites you visit nowadays have a green “Secured” box beside their web addresses somewhere in your browser’s address bar. It’s another factor to successfully rank on search engines.

Having the HTTPS encryption on your website tells Google that your website is safe to navigate and users can as well provide and protect sensitive personal information, such as credit card numbers. This is very important if you are running sales on your website. Websites such as E-Commerce and Classifieds need this as well.

You probably might have no idea on how to go about this. If you do, please make sure SSL encryption is activated for any website you want to rank on Google. If you do not know how to go about this, contact your web developer, or your hosting company. They will definitely assist you on this. It’s not a “wait-for-24-hours” thingy. No big deal about it.

DECLARE YOUR DOCUMENT TYPE.

Every webpage’s doctype tells Google and browsers how to translate each page and as well determines how it is rendered eventually to your users.

If you do not declare your doctype when coding or designing your website, the browser will most likely guess. This guess might be correct, and sometimes incorrect. Search engines will use whatever guess the browser gives it to process information about your website. So do make sure to properly define the doctype for your webpage.

Most HTML coded websites start with the doctype declaration below:

 

This simply tells the browser and the search engine to process the logical information on the page as HTML, also urging to the fact that your website is designed and coded in HTML. This adequately prevents guessing errors between your browser and the search engine and is as well a key factor to getting your website ranked on Google.

USE CORRECT HTML, CSS, AND RESPONSIVE SYNTAX

Even though incorrectly or poorly coded html tags may not necessarily affect your search engine rankings, it is another factor that can cause your website to be wrongly translated by your browser or search engine. Proper and valid HTML coding ensures your browser and Google sees your website the same way you see it, and as well, the same way you want your users to see and access your webpage.

Use up-to-date CSS and bootstrap when developing your website. Avoid incorrect passing of properties and values. And make sure your website is responsive across all devices. In fact, make sure your website is Mobile-First responsive. Google appreciates mobile responsive websites than websites with separate desktop and mobile pages. Learn the basics of bootstrap or material design to achieve mobile responsiveness and scalability across all devices. It helps greatly to improve Google rankings.

Keep in mind: USER EXPERIENCE is important.

 

IMAGES ARE GOOD FOR SEO TOO

When using images on your website, take note of the image names and as well the extensions used. The extensions are what formats the images are rendered in, like jpeg, png, gif, etc.

Take note as well of the image description and ‘alt’ attributes. They go a long way in describing what the image and the page is all about. This isn’t so crucial but it is necessary to rank your website when users search using Google Images. You never can tell how much traffic can come to your webpage from a simple image search.

Redirect broken links and deleted pages to a 404 Page

Be sure to make sure invalid URLS and broken links on your website directs your visitors a properly designed 404 page.  It gives your users and Google a good impression about your website, and also lets them know it will be fixed soon.

UNDERLINE LINKS

Even though it sounds as an old practice, underlined links serves as a universal indicator that a piece of text links to another page within or outside your website. It also helps Google quickly understand that aspect of your page, and quickly index your website, if necessary.

LET IMPORTANT AND UNIQUE KEYWORDS REFLECT IN THE TITLE ASPECT OF YOUR WEBPAGE

Always learn to implement unique title tags to every page of your website. Having a title that represents and summarizes what the page is all about helps roll out your website faster in search results. Remember, your title is comparable to a news headline. People look out for headlines more. The catchier the headline, the more compelled they will be to read your content. And the longer they stay on your webpage, reading useful content provided, the better it is for your SEO.

USE UNIQUE META DESCRIPTION TAGS FOR IMPORTANT PAGES OF YOUR WEBSITE.

The tips provided above also apply to the meta description tag. Your description tag is most likely the first aspect of useful information your visitors will see about your website whenever you are displayed. How useful and catchy that information is determines if they will eventually click on your website and visit. Make sure your meta description contains a semi-lengthy summary of what that page or website is all about. Highlight one of the keypoints of your content into the meta description tag. Remember it is what visitors see after reading your headline, which is the title. A good description is between 100 and 155 characters long.

AVOID DUPLICATE CONTENT

Do your possible best to avoid duplicate content information on your pages. This applies especially to e-commerce websites that have to handle several similar products with duplicate descriptions. Each page should use a single canonical URL. This helps Google differentiate the original source of the content from the duplicates. Make sure to research on and utilize the use of canonical tags as an helpful measure.

INTEGRATE SOCIAL MEDIA

Google values social media links. So also do users. Using social media icons and links while designing your website will help it rank higher and better. Make sure you include social media elements for all your media accounts. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the likes.

It shows Google and your users alike that you are personable and reachable.

USE USER-FRIENDLY URLS

User friendly URLs also mean SEO friendly URLs. URL that is hard to read will not likely rank on Google. Trust me. Google doesn’t want to bug a user with complicated urls like www.mywebsite.com/index.php?&id=12345_rel-ref=#2824738… It is not SEO friendly.

Google prefers urls like www.mywebsite.com/academy/courses . As you see, the latter is easier to read. This makes it very easy for Google to access your website’s structure and as well serve it to searchers.

CONSIDER ACCESSIBLE DESIGN AND USER EXPERIENCE

The design of your website and the experience users have while using your website is a strong factor in determining your position on search results. If your website is hardly accessible and difficult to navigate, it will surely tell on your rankings. Your website has to be viewable and adapt to all browsers. 

Do not use images with large sizes or heavy videos especially on the front pages of your website as this will cause slow loading of your website. Like I highlighted at Number 1, Google hates slow loading websites. Infact, if your website takes longer than 2 seconds to load, it will greatly affect your rankings.

So make sure to purchase quality web hosting, use up to date design standards, make it suitable for your audience and provide quality content.

What are you waiting for?

Make a few simple adjustments to your new/existing website this week based on this guide, and watch how it affects your website’s search engine ranking.

magzey:
Wait and hear the cost of the project.Cool down

When you are talking about the cost of the project remember that Bayelsa is completely below water. It's people like you that will be laughing at Lekki residents during the rainy season and still hope to live in the Lekki one day. Radarada

Razak5:
Take home point

1. The motherboard is still intact!!

Goodness, it's a desktop...if it were to be a laptop @udemzyudex ,you know the story na

This kind problem nor fit happen for lappy na. How u wan change the voltage from 110 to 220? Also last last na charger go die first before e reach MOBO

Miss Nigeria has bleached her destiny away. No chance of finishing in the top 3

MartinCorridon:
1000 hours of experience on several platforms is quite a lot. Let me tell you what you do on most online courses. At the end, you do a post course assessment to review the content, flow of information, accessibility to materials etc. You waste quite a lot of time on these surveys.

These experiences put me in good stead to develop an entirely new online platform.

What i know i can't do is the coding and programming language. But developing a platform for me is quite easy because i have tons of experience.

Case in point. My past masters applications abroad take 4 - 8 weeks to review. I applied for an online masters recently and put in an exhaustive list of courses that i remember i did.... i got a positive response in less than 12 hours!

Okay let me break it down a bit. You don't need to do any coding. You see the moodle software mentioned there? Completely free and u can download it and start using it for free. Using an elearning platform however is completely different from developing learning content and curriculum to be deployed on an elearning platform. You need a pedagogic set of skills to he able to accomplish that. Unless you are telling me you have trained as an educator or trainer, you'd lack the skills required to develop content to be deployed for any type of formal learning whether electronic or physical

MartinCorridon:
Coursera.org, Edx.org, USAID Global Health E-learning Center, Udemmy.

These sites offer free online courses with certificates for those interested. I have done over 100.

I can easily apply for this position with 1000 hours experience....But, i prefer what i am doing

Lol! Your response clearly indicates that you won't qualify for the job. Key requirement is ability to develop content which is clearly absent if you only use the sites mentioned

Slye
Habeebpain

Kylekent59:
yea, very good use of English. But that " I live at the East"( I taught we use "IN" for east),kinda research because we are all here to learn. No hate,i really like this kind of post.

Following...

Good English until where he said the American told him "Am seating on her seat".

McAdekunle:
Do you want me to be killed......this is the only way i can get this information out there....WAEC can easily change the result back and claim photoshop.....the politicians behind it can easily send assassins after me....

And you think you can't be traced with this moniker? Very easy. Nairaland just needs to cross match your current ip address with previous monikers that have used the same IP. they'd be a pattern and your original moniker will bubble to the top. Unless you have done an intelligent thing and used a café to run this new moniker.

onlytiles:
When you rush to cover up a scam, you create more scam. Did WAEC has online Portal as far back as 1982

Nope. But you can check results as far back as 1980 on the WAEC portal. They upload the results there

morzook:
who can help me with the files to update to Mac OS Sierra? Downloading from app store has been frustrating

It's a huge file o. Sure u want to download it. Or you'd rather buy an already downloaded file burnt on DVD

Nwaohafia1:
I don't know why Uber have refused to come to Port Harcourt after 2 years they planned doing so.

Who has the contact of their country manager or any other high ranking person?

PH is too gangster. Isn't it the same PH that Jumia logistics staff were killed?

janellemonae:
1st class from oxford university?! If he's sure it's not oxford Brooke's university, then I must say the girl is an 'igi iwe'. *standing ovation*

I am soooo bored today.

I was expecting them to mention the college in Oxford. If not na Oxford Brookes joor

Never use USSD. Never have, never will

Amiblaize77:
Sincerely all this back and forth isn't really what i want to be reading am an entry level graduate in need of a job please dear recruiter I'd really appreciate being part of the candidates you screen for work positions am a graduate of International Relations, am through with Nysc and i have sent numerous Applications but nothing yet your tips are really handy and i appreciate them

One thing you require is a proper lesson in punctuation and English grammar. No matter how skilled you are NO proper organisation will recruit you with the litany of highlighted blunders.