What makes a good website?

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People often ask us: What makes a good website? Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy, one-size-fits-all answer. As with many things SEO, the answer is: it depends. What kind of site do you have, and what do you want to achieve? Who do you want to target? There are, however, a few best practices that help you get underway. In this post, we’ll list 7 elements that can help every site become a good site and a better search result.
Table of contents
Holistic SEO7 elements of a good website1. Your website satisfies user intent and has a clear goal2. Your website has technical prowess3. Your website is trustworthy, safe and secure4. Your website has a great design and stellar UX5. Your site has awesome, user-centered content6. Your site is mobile-friendly (or rather, designed mobile-first)7. Your site can ‘talk’ directly to search enginesSo what makes a good website?
Holistic SEO

The number one thing you should keep in mind is something that we advocate a lot at Yoast: holistic SEO. Essentially, holistic SEO helps you strive to be the best result. This comes down to optimizing every part of your site on all levels; from satisfying user intent with your content to offering a stellar user experience. If you combine all these things in a solid SEO strategy, implement the enhancements, and keep an eye on the results, then you’re on the right track!
7 elements of a good website

Many things we deem important for a good website are hard to quantify. There’s a lot of talk about quality in SEO, for instance. Even Google has been saying for years that you should focus on the quality of your site and content. After every algorithmic update that Google implements, the answer for those who lost rankings is the same: it might not be your fault. Other sites might seem to be a better fit for this specific query. Nonetheless, you should work on the overall quality of your content.
People flock to the Search Quality Raters Guidelines for input on how to improve their quality. Now, you shouldn’t take everything that Google says as gospel, but in this case, they are right. You should improve your content — always! Make sure to look at user intent and the behavior of your potential customers. Periodically redo your keyword research. And check your niche. What’s happening in your part of the market? By continually evaluating your SEO strategy, you’ll get a grip on the changing market and find new opportunities.
1. Your website satisfies user intent and has a clear goal

Why should anyone come to your site and do business with you? It’s not because you think you have an awesome product — that just doesn’t fly anymore. “Build it and they will come?” Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. You need to have a clear mission and goal for your website.
<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-does-your-audience-need">What does your audience need?</h4>
If you want to succeed, you need to know your audience. You have to uncover everything about them. You can probably find out what your audience says they want, but is that the same as what they really need? Does your product or service offer a possible solution to a problem, or does it make your customer’s life genuinely better? Are you selling a drill or a hole in the wall?
<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-focus-on-your-site-s-search-intent">Focus on your site’s search intent </h4>
Your story has to be right. It has to align with what people want and need. This means you should nail your site’s search intent. Uncover all the different ways of how people can end up on your pages, then tailor these to answer their questions. Map out your user journey from A to Z and place your content in strategic spots. Also keep a close eye on the way you formulate your answers. More often than not, a conversational style will turn out to be what you are looking for.
2. Your website has technical prowess

A good website is easily crawlable, and shows search engines what they can and can’t index. Good sites don’t have a huge amount of errors. A good website loads super fast, from anywhere in the world. Make sure you do everything you can to get your pages to load as fast as possible.
Technical SEO is incredibly important, but you can get ahead of the curve by getting the basics right. Thoroughly think about which CMS you’re going for and how you’re going to run it. We may be a bit biased, but WordPress has given us everything we need. It’s solid, flexible and has a huge following. WordPress is pretty SEO-friendly, but with a bit of help from Yoast SEO, you can get your WordPress SEO going in no time.Also make sure to pick a reputable hosting company; one that’s flexible and helpful.
3. Your website is trustworthy, safe and secure

Both search engines and users are looking for signals that signify trust.Things like regular downtime might be an indication of sloppy maintenance. A missing green lock icon can mean you don’t take security seriously. But why is this important?
<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-best-result">Best result</h4>
Search engines like Google want to give searchers the best possible result. Increasingly, if a search engine doubts the claims you make, or if you use sketchy ‘experts’ to validate your content, search engines will not show your content. Instead, they’ll pick a result that has proven to be a good and trustworthy result. That’s why you need to work on your trustworthiness on all levels, both technical as well as in content.
<h4 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-safe-for-visitors">Safe for visitors</h4>
In addition, your site should be a safe haven for visitors. You need to have your security in order. A hacked site isn’t getting you anywhere! And a hacked site is easier to prevent than it is to fix. Use up-to-date software, have your SSL in order, create strong passwords and use tools such as Cloudflare to protect your site from DDoS attacks.
4. Your website has a great design and stellar UX

Does your website need to be beautiful? Let’s be honest, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You won’t please everyone with your design. You should, however, create a website design that fulfills the goals you set. For example, your message should come across loud and clear. The design should also be on-brand and well-thought-out. But more importantly, your site should be clear and easy to use for everyone. Accessibility is not something you should scrimp on.
You also need to consider user experience. Which is not only how something looks, but also how it feels. It’s about giving users an enjoyable experience; something they will remember. This means it’s not good UX to let users wait long for your pages to load, or have them become frustrated because they can’t read the text on your site thanks to your color scheme or because they can’t hit the buttons on your mobile site. Ask yourself: how can I turn any possible frustration on my website into happiness?
And happy users might just have higher buyer intent, so get those CTAs in order!
5. Your site has awesome, user-centered content

Be user-centered, not company-centered. Good content helps your users accomplish their goals. But you want to offer this content at the right moment, while keeping your business goals firmly in sight. To do so, you need to know your user inside out, as I mentioned earlier. Understand your audience, understand their behavior, and focus your content on that. The content you offer should be clear and easy to understand by using language your users know well. Try to bring something unique to the table. Do the research and present original reporting.