Search Engine Optimization - A Do-it-yourself Guide For The Small Business Owner
|
So your company has a website ? an important step to validate your company, boost its visibility and increase its sales. Now how do you get it to show up on Google and the other search engines like Yahoo and MSN?
A high search engine ranking for your website is essential. At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the internet find them through search engines.
To increase your website's ranking on search engines, you could hire a company to do it for you. There is a whole search engine optimization (SEO) industry that will gladly take your money. SEO is simpler than it is made out to be, and there are several steps that you can do yourself to increase the rank of your website.
1. The content of your website is key. Search engines check to see if search words appear close to the top of the page and their frequency on the page. You must first determine what the key words that your customers search with. Consider the website from the perspective of a potential customer and try to understand what they would be searching for on the web. Aim to have 100-250 words on each page with those key words used as often as possible. Those same key words should be included in the title tag of your coding, but keep it to six words or less. (this is the coloured bar at the top of the page). The site at http://www.related-pages.com/seoTools.aspx?cb=wgyr has some great tools to help you optimize key words.
2. Link Popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in search engine rank. Almost all of the search engines use link popularity to rank websites. Inbound links matter most, and highly ranked sites linking to your site are worth more that lower ranked sites. If you can provide content that other sites want to link to, you will move up in the rankings. This means that you may have to actively solicit links to your content and perhaps write articles for other websites.
3. Proper Page Structure. This can be tricky for people who don't know HTML, but it really isn't that complicated. Your pages should be coded correctly so they are easier for the search engines to index. Your site should have easy to follow text navigation, and you should avoid using Flash to build your entire page because it makes the site harder to index. If you want dynamics on your page generated by other languages such as JavaScript, you should have these codes in external files. There is also an html validation tool at http://validator.w3.org/ that is useful. Errors in programming code and incorrect html can keep the search engine robots from indexing your web pages. Keep coding clean and simple.
4. META Tags. This may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but it is very simple code that should be included in your site because its makes it more inviting to the search engine spiders that crawl the internet.
5. Don't Cheat. Don't try to 'spam' the search engines by including invisible keywords repeated hundreds of times or by repeating key words in META tags. The engines are getting smart and will penalize you for this. They may even drop your site all together.
6. Patience, Patience, Patience! It can take weeks for the search engines to re-index and re-rank your site once you have made changes or if you have a new site. Search engines are smart, but they taken time to sort through the vast amounts of information that's thrown at them. If you are patient, you will see results.
7. Many of the major search engines still include a free submission section for their listings. It may take 6-8 weeks (or more) for your listings to show up, but Google, AltaVista and Yahoo still accept free submissions. Since search engine rank is key for success on the internet, you may want to budget for search engine optimization and consider paid listings (Yahoo), or pay-per-click advertising on Google.
Good web design is a balance between what looks great and optimizing your site for search engines. Your content must be good enough so that other sites want to link to it while at the same time include key search words that will draw potential customers. You also need to have your site built correctly and take the time to manage it and keep it fresh. Now you are well on your way to having a high ranking website on Google. Good luck!
Colleen Happ designs effective and affordable websites and graphics. Her portfolio can be viewed at http://www.happconsulting.com. She offers free one hour consultations to show how an effective website can benefit your business.
|
|
|
The Mystery Of The Magical Keyword Density Formula
Keyword density. When it comes to SEO copywriting, this has to be one of the most talked about subjects. Why? Because keywords are the very foundation of search engine copywriting. Without keywords we wouldn't even have SEO copywriting. Because keywords (or more accurately, keyphrases) play such an important role in search engine copywriting, it might make sense that there are certain rules and regulations - certain formulas - that should be followed. It might make sense, but, I'm sorry to say, the mystery? the magic? is more like a myth.I have a guess as to where these magic formulas come from. Someone brags to their friend that they got #1 ranking for a particular keyphrase. The friend studiously looks over the site and starts taking notes. "He used this phrase eight times in a 500-word piece of copy. He put the keywords ...(related: Seo)
Seo - Are You Making The Search Engines Mad?
If you've been involved in SEO (search engine optimization) for a while, you may remember the time when you could create a web page and get it ranked at the top of any search engine with little effort.All you had to do was load up the page with the keywords you wanted to rank high for, make sure your meta tags were stuffed with those same keywords, submit the page and within a few days or weeks you've captured a top 20 or even top 10 result.The major search engines were pretty easy to figure out. Some focused on the first 90 characters on a page, others gave more weight to the title tag in yo...(related: Seo)
Website Ranking With An Internet Marketing Specialist
On the internet, competition is stronger than ever. There was a time where paying a few bucks to get in Yahoo was enough to generate substantial traffic but marketing websites on the internet got much more complex since. Google is now a major player in the search engine industry and any serious internet marketing specialist and seo expert knows how important it is to get a good website ranking in that popular search engine. Understanding Google's algorythm along with having good html and writing skills can often make the difference between being an amateur or a good internet marketing speci...(related: Seo)
Seo = Search Engine Optimization, Tips On Successful Page Ranking
One of the key things to remember when developing your web-site presence is to always evaluate your competition. See what's working for them; how they market their products and services, and even evaluate their KEYWORD and DISCRIPTION tags.The key points of using these two Meta Tags, is optimization!Evaluate your Keywords: ...(related: Seo)
How To Avoid The 3 Biggest Title Tag Mistakes With Search Engines
Your title tag is the most important 3 to 12 words on your Web page. It accounts for up to 80% of your rankings on search engines.Here's why:Search Engines look for "searched for" words first in title tags.The title tag ...(related: Seo)
Sitemaps 101 - Back To Seo School
Sitemaps are without doubt one of the most often ignored and undervalued aspects of search engine optimization. You've probably spent a huge amount of time working on pages of original content, keyword density and getting incoming links but never once spared a thought for a sitemap for your new creation.What is a sitemap?Put simply it's a page or pages that contain a list of and link to all the other documents on your site. This is useful on two levels:1. Your visitor can quickly reference all the documents on your site to find exactly w...(related: Seo)
Good Things Come To Those Who Wait (and Other Analogies And Cliché?s For Seo)
We've all heard that familiar expression, "Good things come to those who wait". Whether you're waiting for your Heinz ketchup to pour out onto your burger (remember those commercials?), waiting for Christmas day to open your gifts, waiting for summer vacation to be let out of school, or waiting in line at the DMV? well, maybe not the DMV, good things will come if you simply allow them to come in their own time.Under normal circumstances that expression is simply not true. You'll still get your ketchup if you s...(related: Seo)
7 Search Engine Optimization Mistakes And Solutions
To many websites, webmasters discover that major sources of website traffic come from search engines. Therefore, they are all keen on gaining top search engine placements through search engine optimization.<...(related: Seo)
How To Pick An Seo Firm
If you're looking for an SEO firm, we recommend that you weigh 10 factors that can save you trouble down the road.1. Check out their experience.You shouldn't have to try hard to find samples of their clients or their SEO performance on individual websites. How competitive are their search terms that are ranking well on Google? Are the search terms that are ranking well difficult terms to position--one, two and three word phrases, or are they easy terms to position because no one else is using them at all--six, seven and eight word terms?2. Ask for testimonial letters.Insist on letterheads from the clients that feature real names, not Fred f...(related: Seo)
The Search Doesnt End At Your Homepage
In a recent report for a new client, I wrote:
"Remember, a visitor's search doesn't end when they leave Google. Their search and the phrases associated with it continue right through to the completion of the task they have in mind."
Many of us pay attention to the keywords and phrases being used by our visitors when they arrive via a search engine. It makes sense not only because it gets you higher rankings, but also because the use of the right search terms signals to your reader that ...(related: Seo)
site-map - Copyright © 2006 | You can send your articles and get links. Contact Webmaster | All Rights Reserved.
| Seo