Every business with a Web site should make Search Engine Optimization
-- trying to get your site as high up as possible on Google and Bing
search-results pages -- a part of their growth strategy.
At its most basic, "SEO" means finding ways to increase your site's
appearance in web visitors' search results. This generally means more
traffic to your site.
While intense SEO can involve complex site restructuring with a firm
(or consultant) that specializes in this area, there are a few simple
steps you can take yourself to increase your search engine ranking.
All it requires is a little effort, and some re-thinking of how you approach content on your site.
The Basic Tips For Search Engine Optimization:
Monitor where you stand
You won't know if your SEO efforts are working unless you monitor your search standings. MarketingVox suggests that you keep an eye on your page rank with tools like Alexa and the Google toolbar.
It's also important to check your referrer log regularly to track
where your visitors are coming from and the search terms they're using
to find your site, according to PC World.
Keywords, keywords, keywords!
You
should be conscious of placing appropriate keywords throughout every
aspect of your site: your titles, content, URLs, and image names. Think
about your keywords as search terms -- how would someone looking for
information on this topic search for it?
The title tag and page header are the two most important spots to put keywords, PC World notes.
BEWARE: Putting ridiculous amounts of keywords on your site will get
you labeled as a spammer, and search engine spiders are programmed to
ignore sites guilty of "keyword-stuffing." Be strategic in your keyword
use.
Link back to yourself
There
is probably no more basic strategy for SEO than the integration of
internal links into your site -- it is an easy way to boost traffic to
individual pages, SEO Consult says.
You should make it standard to link back to your archives frequently when creating new content. MarketingVox
advises that you also make the anchor text search-engine-friendly: "The
more relevant words point to a page, the more likely that page is to
appear in search results when users run a query with those terms."
As with all other SEO approaches, be sure your links are appropriate,
and be careful not to cross the line into excessive linking -- you
don't want your visitors to get annoyed.
Create a sitemap
Adding
a site map -- a page listing and linking to all the other major pages
on your site -- makes it easier for spiders to search your site.
"The fewer clicks necessary to get to a page on your website, the better," advises MarketingVox.
Search-friendly URLs
Make your URLs more search-engine-friendly by naming them with clear keywords.
SEO Consult explains: "For instance, it’s easy to understand what ‘www.puppyfun.co.uk/puppyhealth/vitamins’ would contain. It’s less easy to understand if the in-house classification system of the business is used, for example ‘www.puppyfun.co.uk/11789/s201.htm’. A dynamic URL is similarly off-putting, even if it contains recognisable words: ‘www.puppyfun.co.uk/search/?s=”health”’.
Avoid Flash
Flash might look pretty, but it does nothing for your SEO. According to the Search Engine Journal,
"Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a
single page... Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly
for best SEO results."
"If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is
all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the
fold," the post continues.
Image descriptions
Spiders
can only search text, not text in your images -- which is why you need
to make the words associated with your images as descriptive as
possible.
Start with your image names: adding an "ALT" tag allows you to include a keyword-rich description for every image on your site. Perfect Optimization explains an easy way to do this.
The visible text around your images is valuable for SEO: MarketPosition
suggests adding captions to all your pictures and being descriptive
with the text in immediate physical proximity to your images.
CONTENT
Your content needs to be fresh -- updating regularly and often is crucial for increasing traffic.
"The best sites for users, and consequently for search engines, are
full of oft-updated, useful information about a given service, product,
topic or discipline," MarketingVox explains.
One way to ensure that your site gets new content on a frequent basis
is to integrate a blog. "Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s
priceless!" the Search Engine Journal
suggests. An executive blog is an excellent way to reach out to your
clients, create more opportunities for internal and external linking,
while giving your site a more personal voice.
Social media distribution
A CEO blog is just one element of social media distribution, an important SEO strategy according to SEO Consult. You should be distributing links to fresh content on your site across appropriate social networking platforms.
Whether displayed on your company's account, or recommended,
re-tweeted, and re-distributed by someone else, this strategy
exponentially multiplies the number of places where visitors will view
your links.
Link to others
An easy way to direct more traffic to your site is by developing relationships with other sites.
PC World
suggests that you personally ask the webmasters of well-respected sites
if they'll include a link to your site on theirs. Be sure to return the
favor -- then everyone wins!
Make certain that your partner has a good web-reputation, of course. MarketingVox warns against getting tied to a "link farm" whose bad SEO habits could bring you down.
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For those who want to start SEO then they should learn the purpose and advantage of SEO especially in websites and internet business and these steps could be there guide for a successful start up.
For those who want to start SEO then they should learn the purpose and advantage of SEO especially in websites and internet business and these steps could be there guide for a successful start up.
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