5 Tips Of Search Engine Optimization

Step 1 Keyword Research The first step in search engine optimization (SEO) for any website is keyword research. What is your target audience going to type in to a search engine? Remember, we are not just talking about single words but two, three and four word phrases. The longer the phrase, the more specific it is and the less competitive it will be to rank for. Ranking highly for a longer keyword phrase will result in less traffic, but is likely to lead to more conversions, so go after those long, specific search terms. Provided, of course, that they are relevant to your site! Try the free Digital Point Solutions keyword suggestion tool: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/. This tool accesses the two main providers of search data, Wordtracker and Overture. You need to find keywords that are not only going to send lots of traffic to your website, but also traffic that is going to convert into sales and clients, traffic relevant to what your site offers. Step 2 Using Keywords in a Website With keyword research complete, the second step in SEO is incorporating those keywords into your website. This is called ‘on-site’ or ‘on-page’ optimization. Search engines analyse the whole of a web page to determine which keywords are relevant but the text within certain areas of a page are given more ‘weight’. The areas below are listed in a rough order of importance, but remember no one knows exactly how search engines rank pages. 1. The title meta tag. 2. The content on the page (within p tags). 3. The anchor text of internal links. 4. The anchor text of external links. 5. The description meta tag. 6. The alt tags of images. 7. The H1 tag (and other heading tags). 8. The filenames of pages. 9. The filenames of images. 10. The title tags of links. Step 3 Search Engine Submission The search engines need to be told a website exists, so they can analyse it and rank it against similar sites. There are two ways search engines find new sites, through sites being submitted to them and by following links from other sites (see step 4). Search engines usually have a form you can fill in to submit a site - here are Google’s: http://www.google.com/addurl/, Live Search: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2 and Yahoo’s: http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request However, hundreds of search engines are available so an automatic submission tool really helps. You can use websites like http://www.freewebsubmission.com or specialised software. Step 4 Link Building Link building is probably the most important part of optimising a website for search engines. Search engines (and especially Google) interpret a link from another website as a ‘vote’ for a site, so the more links you can get to your website, the better. However, quality is just as important as the quantity of links. A link from a page or, even better, a whole site about the same subject as yours (i.e. with similar keywords to your site) carries more weight. The text of the links pointing to a site (the anchor text) is also important. If the anchor text includes your targeted keywords, the link is an even better ‘vote’ for your site. A few of the main ways you can get links to your site are: * Submitting your site to web directories. * Exchanging links with other websites with similar or related content (reciprocal linking). * Writing and submitting articles. But most important, you need to create great content that other sites will want to link to. Step 5 Monitoring and Analysis When a site has been designed and optimised, you can't just sit back and wait for visitors. It is important to check how well a site is ranking in the search engines and how many people visit it. Where a site appears in search engine results can be checked by hand (typing phrases into search engines and seeing if a site appears) or by using special SEO tools to track ranking over time. These tools (either online or software) enable you to check many keywords on several different search engines at the same time. Digital Point provide an online keyword tracker tool: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/ You should also check the server logs for your website to see how many visitors have found your site and the search phrases they have used. Remember that your competitors are going to be optimising their sites and trying to improve their search engine positions. Even if you achieve a high ranking for your site, the SEO work doesn’t stop there. You need to continually monitor your rankings, build links and add content to maintain a top position.