Ways to Boost Your Website's Ranking (SEO)

Follow these tips to boost your search engine optimization (SEO) and see your website surge to the top of search engine rankings.

Publish Relevant - Authoritative Content The number one driver of your search engine results is quality, authoritative content, and there is no alternative to unique content—especially regarding SEO marketing. Improve your web writing talents and position yourself as an authority on the subject you're writing about.

Keywords

Identify and target a single keyword phrase for each authoritative content page on your website. 

Education resources under Title IX

Northern lights photography

What exactly is the distinction between engineering and engineering technology?

Several Keyword Phrases

It is difficult for a website to gain search engine ranks for several keyword phrases unless the keywords are highly similar. A single page may rank for 'biomedical engineering jobs' and 'biomedical engineering careers.' A single-page ranking for 'student affairs' and 'dean of students' or 'gender discrimination' and 'violence reporting procedures' is doubtful.

Create a separate page for each search phrase to rank for numerous keyword phrases using your website.

Inserting Keywords

Once decided on a keyword phrase for a specific page, examine the following:

Can I utilize a portion or the entirety of the keyword phrase in the page URL (by employing keywords in folders)?

Can I include a portion or the entire keyword phrase in the page title?

Can I use a portion or the entire keyword phrase in page headings and subheadings?

Yes, answers to these questions can help your search engine ranking. However, be natural and user-friendly. For instance, you don't want the term 'engineering' to appear three or more times in the URL, nor do you want the phrase Northern Lights to appear in the page title and every header. Readability and usability continue to triumph over search engine optimization.

Content

Aside from the page URL, title, and headers, content significantly influences search engine rankings. Repeat your keyword phrase numerous times across the page, once or twice in the opening and closing paragraphs, and two to four times more throughout the rest of the text. Be commanding—link to essential sources and information strategically within your organization's main website and to other beneficial websites.

Don't forget to highlight these keywords with bold, italics, header tags (mainly an H1), and other tags—but don't go overboard. Your language and writing style should read organically, and never sacrifice decent content for the sake of SEO. The most extraordinary pages are written with the user in mind, not with the search engine in mind.

Regularly Update Your Content

You've probably seen that we care a lot about content, and search engines do. Regularly updated material is regarded as one of the best markers of a site's relevance, so keep it up to date. Audit your content regularly (say, every semester) and make modifications as needed.

Blogging

Writing more keyword-rich content for your departmental news blog can also help your search engine rankings. Blog entries can be brief updates on the topics you're interested in when it allows the reader to get a better picture and more information about a topic, interlink that related CMS webpages, and blog entries.

Metadata

When constructing your website, leave a gap between the tags to put metadata or information about the page's contents. If you have a CMS site created by the UMC web team, this data will be pre-populated. However, as your site evolves, you must evaluate and update the metadata.

Metadata for the Title

The page titles visible at the top of a browser and the headline inside search engine results are controlled by title metadata, which is your page's most crucial piece of metadata.

Make use of alt tags.

Always use alt tags or text descriptions to explain image and video files. They make it possible for search engines to find the page, which is critical for folks who use text-only browsers or screen readers.