Doing a little SEO work for a client, I was quickly reminded that all parts of a website need careful tending because they can all drive in traffic. A mere day after my clients  added descriptive alt attributes to their images, Google search traffic started coming in for some of the text found in the attributes. If that’s not a reason to validate your HTML, nothing is. Here is how I do images now: Images are In Charge of Your Linking Title.

It’s a Team Thing

In the case of getting more visitors to your site from search engines understand that every facet of your website could play a large roll in your traffic. Your content could be generating traffic, but your meta descriptions, alt attributes, and many other factors could play just as significant part.

I think we all play the shortcut game, doing whatever is easiest or fastest, and I say keep doing it.  Next time you do take a shortcut though; write it down. That way you can come back to it, and fix it right. It could be the biggest generator of search traffic for your entire website.

Here are some key players to bring in the traffic:

• Valid HTML
• Use of heading tags – Heading Tag – A How To
• Alt attribute for images – Images are In Charge of Your Linking Title
• High quality and unique titles for each page – Title of Site
• High quality meta description tags for each page – Your Description Sucks
• Anchor text closely matches links title – Notice how I did the links in this post
• Killer content
• Great layout design

The list really goes on an on, and it doesn’t just stop with improving search engine traffic. The things that you do to improve the overall look of your website can help, how users interact with your website (usability), device accessibility to your website, and of course its content all play huge, possibly even equal rolls.

Take the time to step back, look at your site, and go for the ones that can start driving traffic in now. I’m betting many of you already know where you cheated yourself. Go back and fix it now. If you have no clue where to start, that is what my usability and design analysis is all about.

Assuming content is king, what would you say is the second most important thing that can be done to a website to improve traffic.

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