So you've made a website, you've published it and now you need those visitors. Where do they come from? Most people will find your site through a search engine. This article will give you a lot of great information about how to get your website to the top of the search results.
When using SEO techniques to set up a website, it is better to use several short articles pertaining to a similar topic instead of one very long article. Long pages are weighed less and short ones weigh more. Additionally, most internet users prefer to read shorter articles rather than longer ones.
If you own a local business and want to make yourself more visible to search engines, make sure you list your business on Google Places. This step will bring up your business to the top of a Google search and will show any information you include (address, phone, website), as well as a map. You will greatly increase visits to your website - and visits to your business.
To get a gauge on if your SEO is working, you have to monitor your standings. Monitor with a tool such as Google taskbar to best keep an eye on your page rank. You'll also want to have an idea of where your site visitors are coming from and which key words they're typing in to find you.
Successful search engine optimization can be accomplished by integrating a site map into your website. This enables search engines to find other pages in your site other than the homepage easily and, thus, enhances your presence on search engines. Be sure to link each page of your website to your site map.
Spend the money on a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign. It's often said you need to spend money to make money, and PPC is one of the necessary spends. Bid on keywords that are relevant to your industry. This technique can help position your website in the search engines, especially for terms where you may not currently hold the best organic ranking.
Write titles suited for the search engine spiders as well as your readers. Clever titles don't usually convey the content of the article. Instead of being cute, simply create titles that tell the reader and the search engine robots what the article is about. Your title should make it clear that the reader will get something good from the article.
Have your pages as close to the root directory as possible. The deeper into the sub directories a page is place the less likely the search engine is to rank it highly. The reasoning is that items that are directly off of a root directory as generally considered more important the sites that are deeper within.
Focus your page on a keyword phrase, not your entire site. Try to have each page centered on a particular keyword and keyword phrase. Your site will rank higher if you go this route as trying to build an entire site around a single keyword ends up reading as a spam site.
Have your page linked within Yahoo and other directories. Having your page linked from those shows the engines that your page is related to the content that is included in that portion of the directory. It's not a huge boost, but it does add a little bit to your overall rankings.
Develop a free calculator, e-book or other electronic product to give away on your website. Be sure it features your website address and business name so people can come back for related products. Post links to the free product on forums related to your field to drive more traffic to your website.
Syndicate articles with RSS. RSS feeds can be a great way for people to get news from content marketing for small business you without having to go to your website. Your article will pop up in their feed and they can read it right away. If your article is good, you can convince them to stop whatever else they may be doing on the internet and head to your site.
When you choose an SEO services company, remember that they are working for you. If they ask you to provide a lot of information that you have no way of having, they are not doing their job. For example, if they ask you to provide keywords, that's a sign you should run away! The SEO services company you hire should generate strong keywords for you, not vice versa!
You can increase site relevance by creating a presence on link-sharing sites like Reddit, Digg, and Del.icio.us. Submit your own site, using clever, ironic, or highly distinctive descriptions, but do not spam. You can increase the effectiveness of these sites by actively participating - commenting on other users' posts, starting discussions, and sharing links with the community.
Feel free to use the meta keyword tag, but don't include too many words. Use only your top 3-5 phrases of 2-3 words each, and make sure those words are also repeated in your copy. The meta keyword tag has mostly depreciated, but there are still some search engines that make use of it.
Site navigation is a critical component in honing your Search Engine Optimization. Your site will consist of multiple pages. Search engines like to know how those pages relate to one another and, in particular, the relative importance of each. Navigation trees help clarify this for users and search engines alike.
Don't overlook images as an important way to grab more traffic. Many site owners and bloggers get a lot of traffic from people searching for specific images. All of the major search engines have image searches, so make sure all of the images on your site or blog are SEO-optimized. Add your keyword phrases into your image captions and filenames.
Make sure that your website is using a template that won't hurt your ranking factor. One example of how that can happen are from too many links on the sidebar. This is particularly important on what is considered the "primary" pages of your website, such as the homepage or main category pages.
Any type of site or blog you're building needs to be optimized so that a search engine can crawl it with its search spiders, grab it, and lift it up in the ranking system. The tips contained within this article shed some light on how you can do that, but now it's up to you to actually get busy doing it.
