One thing you might notice when your credit union goes through a website redesign is the traffic to your site can fluctuate quite a bit. If you monitor this regularly, it can be a little startling.
That’s because the way your website is designed can impact your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is how people find your credit union’s website online.
That said, you’re competing for their attention against everything from competitors’ websites to funny cat videos. You must ensure that people who are googling for financial guidance and products can actually find your credit union’s website out of all the other websites.
Ensure your next website redesign doesn’t harm your SEO by following these steps:
- HTML or HyperText Markup Language is what search engines use to understand your content structure. CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, explain how the website is styled. Think of HTML as the skeleton and CSS as the meat. If too much focus goes to CSS, then your website can be more difficult for search engines to identify content on the pages, and they may load slower. Simply put, people won’t find your website when they are searching and if they do, it will load more slowly, causing more people to abandon your site in favor of one that works more quickly.
- Semantic tags clearly describe the content on your credit union website pages: <header> <body> are some simple, common examples. Using these tags makes it easier for search engines to interpret the content on your website so your website will show up in relevant searches. Using unnecessary tags can make it more difficult for search engines to scan your website’s content, and, in turn, make it harder for your potential members to find your credit union.
- When you have several pages with similar content, like a press release you have in your news section and also in your blog section, website developers must build in rel-canonical tags to avoid negative impacts on your credit union website page rankings in search.
- Use plugins, like Yoast SEO, to help manage your SEO by ranking each page on your site. It will tell you whether the page is poor, average, or good with regard to SEO ranking, as well as actions to take to improve SEO. Other things to help your SEO are to focus on keywords in your website copy that will boost ranking and update meta tags and meta descriptions on pages to assist search engines.
In today’s world, people are looking to your credit union for financial guidance and resources – your credit union website can be a valuable tool for member engagement and growth. When you’re ready for the same from your credit union website redesign firm, get uncommn.
