4 Prime SEO Tips to know for .NET website in 2023

Anyone who owns a public website is aware of the crucial function search engines play in driving traffic to the site. It's crucial to be found by search engines and placed highly in their search result listings. More traffic from better ranks can result in more paying customers and advertising money. 

Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is the process of optimizing a website for ranking well in the search engine results page. We will look at the prime SEO tips in this article for you to use with your.NET website.

ASP.NET - An overview

Microsoft created the open-source ASP.NET web application development framework to let ASP.Net developers build dynamic websites, applications, and services. Applications created using this cross-platform framework run on Windows, Linux, macOS, and Docker.

To create dynamic sites, they need the help of web app frameworks like ASP.NET to make it seamless for all the users both on PC and Mobiles. It paves way for the bilateral communication between browsers & servers. 

The programming codes are written in various .NET languages including J#, C# & Visual Basics. This extensive architecture comprises 3 vital elements as Language (Programming code languages), Library (Contains necessary resources & frameworks) & CLR (Common Language Runtime).

The first version was launched in 2002 by the tech giant Microsoft. The reason behind this invention is to run across every web application using a standard HTTP protocol. The latest cross-platform version was unveiled recently in 2016 named ASP.NET Core and each year this application gets revamped to launch a newer version every November of the same year.

The web apps that are created using .NET frameworks often require different subsets to perform via IIS (Internet Information Services) on the server side. This service was first created by Microsoft. The major functionality of this service is to share the outcomes of HTML codes generated through web apps to the client browser upon initiation

Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, and ASP.NET Web Pages are the three frameworks that ASP.NET provides for building web applications. 

With any of the three frameworks, which are all reliable and mature, you may build outstanding online apps. You will always receive all the advantages and features of ASP.NET, regardless of the framework you choose.

Each framework aims to support a particular type of development. Your decision will be influenced by your programming resources (knowledge, abilities, and development experience), the kind of application you're building, and the development method you feel most at ease with. 

But why do you need SEO optimization for your website? Let’s know.

Why do you need SEO optimization for your .NET website?

SEO has two main objectives. To provide high-quality content that fulfills people's needs, you first need to understand what they are looking for online. The second is to enable you in building a website whose content can be found, indexed, and understood by search engines. So, why do you need SEO? 

• Most people who use search engines are more likely to click on one of the top 5 choices on the search engine results pages (SERPS). Your .NET website must be among the top results to capitalize on this and attract people to your site or buyers to your online store.

• SEO is not just about search engines; effective SEO techniques for your .NET website can enhance the website's usability and user experience.

• Consumers trust search engines, so having a website that ranks highly for the keywords they're looking for increases that trust.

• Many people think that it is not important to optimize the landing page, but in reality effective Landing page designs can attract more visitors and ultimately increase the conversion rate.

• The social media promotion of your .NET website benefits from SEO. If users discover your website through Google or Bing searches, they are more likely to share it on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites.

• A large website needs SEO to function properly. Both directly and indirectly, SEO can help websites with multiple authors. An increase in organic traffic is their direct gain, and having a standard framework to use before posting content on the site is their indirect gain.

• You can beat out the competition with SEO. If two websites are offering the same product, the one with SEO is more likely to attract more visitors and generate more sales.

You want traffic to your website, but quality above quantity is what matters. Making your website more search-engine friendly will increase the number of people that visit it to view your services, products, or content. 

But is .NET a good framework for building SEO-friendly websites? Let’s take a look.

Challenges with SEO-friendly ASP.NET web development

ASP.NET is a web spider's greatest nightmare, to put it mildly. Unless developers know how to use the framework to remove the flaws, it's very much the devil in disguise for SEO. Most IT professionals recommend .NET while building websites. 

They frequently hold Microsoft certifications, which is one of the reasons. Microsoft products are the best, and we all adore them. However, using .NET to build websites can be expensive and cause a slew of SEO issues for you. Here are a few challenges. 

1. Rigid structure

The SEO of the website should always be your top priority while working on a website project. You must build a website on the ideal platform to increase the likelihood of successful SEO. You won't be able to get effective search engine optimization results if you're utilizing ASP.NET. 

You can find it challenging to increase your website's search engine optimization using .Net. When building your website with ASP.NET, you will need to make several changes to your SEO techniques. The main cause is inflexible .NET's structure, which makes search engine optimization more difficult.

2. Viewstate slows the crawl rate

Search engine bots have a "crawl quota," so if they visit your site more than once to pick up one page, you won't be indexed as deeply. On the pages of many websites, particularly those built with the ASP.NET framework, there is a block of alphanumeric code called ViewState that affects the indexing. 

For crawlers and search engines, this code, especially towards the top of the rendered source can be distracting and occasionally drags down the remaining content. However challenging it seems, websites built with the ASP.NET framework can be made SEO-friendly with the help of some powerful SEO tips. Let's understand how it works!

4 Prime SEO tips for .NET websites

Your website's ability to draw visitors is, in part, closely associated with how rapidly its pages load. Your website will see an increase in visitors if it loads more rapidly. To ensure that your site is user-friendly and attracts the targeted audience, ensure that the ASP.NET performance is ideal from an SEO perspective.

Here are 4 SEO tips to build your .NET website more SEO-friendly

1. Consider the page tiles 

Between the various tags you employ, it is imperative to consider the page titles. Employing page titles is simple to accomplish and has a major impact on how well your site ranks. These titles will also be displayed as links in the search results when someone searches for something. Using similar page titles across the board is a blunder that developers frequently do. 

Give attention to the titles because it is vital for search results. One of the best ways to optimize a website for a certain subject or keyword is to use the title tag. Avoid stuffing your title tag with a bunch of keywords because you'll be "paying in" for each one, which means that the weight of your site will be distributed among all the keywords you include. 

Select one, two, or a keyword combination to increase relevance and ranking. For instance, if you use the phrase "Hello world," some page fragments could be useful to the user & some page fragments may serve as descriptions. 

Once more, the outcomes will display fragments that might not be helpful to the user. Similarly, there is a simple technique to achieve the following when working with Master pages:

//assuming, that your <head runat="server" id="myHead"> 

if (Request.CurrentExecutionFilePath.Contains("example.aspx"))

{

    HtmlTitle title = new HtmlTitle();

    title.Text = "Example";

    myHead.Controls.Add(title);

}

Therefore, if your website has three pages—the Homepage, the About Me page, and the Contact page—you should give each of these three pages a unique, helpful title. The influence of your keywords will increase as you employ fewer keywords. The same holds for "meta name=keywords" and "meta name="description," but today the title tag has the most impact.

When you use page names strategically, you encourage searchers to visit your site more frequently when it provides the desired information. Additionally, if your page offers something special or piques their interest, then they can view the outcomes. 

On the other hand, creating page titles is simple and quick to do. You can benefit from having titles inserted for each page when building a CMS. In addition, you can create page headings using product names and product catalogs. Using page titles, you can prepare additional data in your database.

2. Use important URLs

A developer needs to adhere to the use of short URLs. Use URLs formatted like those of static sites instead of lengthy ones. However, there is more to it than most developers realize. For a better understanding, see the steps below.

abcde.com/index.php?op=content&act=view&id=100.html

abcde.com/content/view/100.html

The first URL appears to be written in a very technical language that is challenging for anyone to comprehend. Since every mail client utilizes the second choice, it is superior to some extent. However, there is a definite distinction between using the two URLs for development.

You can take it a step further and attempt to give the page relevant URLs. Simply put, a visitor can grasp a meaningful URL if it has some meaning. You can determine what a meaningful URL will look like by taking the following example:

abcde.com/printers/laserjet-1200.html

This URL shows you that you can locate the steps you need to take. It serves as an introduction to the LaserJet printer that is mentioned in the URL in this instance.

Numerous components can give you examples of URL rewriting. The rating may very well be better if you include more keywords in your URLs. Use elements like speaking URLs and other elements to build websites.

3. Focus on the content structure 

The structure of each page on the website is distinct. There could be a title, paragraphs, a teaser, headings & more in the framework. There can be several quotations, citations, or details regarding the page.

However, the majority of crawlers do not store data while examining CSS. The following actions are necessary to ensure that your page is semantically correct:

• To break up larger stories into sections that make sense to the reader, use different headings.
• For this, you can use the h1 >... /h1 > tags.
• In addition, you can use a tag or in-between sentences in your text to emphasize them.
• Additionally, by using this for quotes and citations, you can make it easier for the robots to distinguish between different parts of your website.

Content that is structured is always easy to read. And the best strategy to make it simpler for users to read your page is as mentioned above.

4. Clean up the source code

Although it may be difficult to believe, your source code should be cleaned up and sought to be as short as feasible. Here’s how you can do that:

• Use external JavaScript instead of inline JavaScript.
• Avoid using inline CSS and instead utilize external style files if possible.
• Use the line-breaking element sparingly & do not include HTML comments.
• If it is not necessary, avoid using the view state.
• Use the form Runat server only when necessary.

You will score higher if the relationship between your content & codes is better. Additionally, use a sitemap to make your website crawlable. A sitemap enables web crawlers, such as Google and Bing spiders, to recognize every online page. 

The crawler will identify and index your page more quickly after it is generated. Apply simple tags whenever you can. Use RSS instead of the alt attribute for photos. Likewise, pings for search engines must be utilized.

Lastly, to make it further crawlable, you can use simple <a href> tags whenever possible. Also, make sure you use the "alt" property for images and pings for search engines.

Conclusion

The right framework must be used while developing an app or website, and you must be mindful of keyword density and other SEO best practices. The ranking of your website will be a vital factor in determining its success, so pay attention as you design it.

One of the widely used technologies in today's technologically advanced society is ASP.NET. A variety of incredible capabilities in ASP.NET can help you create web services that are safe, reliable, scalable, and more SEO-friendly with these SEO tips.