Monday, September 28th, 2009
What is search engine optimization (SEO)?
- Website can be edited or "optimized" to be more visible by Search engines like Google and Yahoo.
- SEO involves making strategic changes to both the code and content (Website copy or text) of your Website.
Top 3 reasons why your Website needs search engine optimization:
- SEO is necessary if you want your Website to appear on search engine results.
- SEO is currently the most effective internet marketing tool for 2009.
- Search engines view Websites differently than people. If your site has mostly images and multimedia content - and very little text - your Website will look like a blank page to search engines.
5 Steps of SEO
- Get a snapshot of your current Website statistics.
- Who is visiting your site? How did they get there? What are they doing there? Getting initial Web statistics is important so you can measure the results of your search engine optimization efforts.
- Many web site hosting providers have a tool for viewing basic statistics. You can also get your site setup to a use a free, more powerful web statistics tool called Google Analytics.
- Do keyword research.
- This is the "strategic" part. A keyword is one or more words that someone would type into a search engine. Each page of your site should be written with a primary keyword as the main topic. Start with your home page and then do keyword research for the other most important pages on your site.
- Think like a web site visitor - what would they type in a Google search box to find your primary product or service? Come up with a short list of keywords. Make sure the keywords are highly relevant to your web page content.
- Test out keyword performance with a free online keyword tool such as Google AdWords: Keyword Tool. The secret is to choose a keyword that is popular but doesn’t have too much competition from other Websites (Websites that are using that same keyword).
- Integrate keywords into your Website.
- Keywords need to be weaved into both the HTML code and the written content of your site. There are specific strategies involved in both areas – so do some research on your own or hire an experienced Website and SEO copywriter like Mediatrunk.com.
- We will edit your existing Website content and code for search engine visibility, and we will also give you key guidelines on how to write effect search engine optimized content for any future press releases, event notices, and blog articles that you may write.
- Write specific content for each web page, and update your site often.
- Be sure to create a separate page for each of your main products or services. Search engines will rank a page higher if it focuses on just one topic or specific keyword.
- Update your Website often. Search engines tend to overlook a site that hasn’t been updated in a while – making it much less visible on search results. If you don’t know what to update your site with, consider adding photos, blog articles, news articles, event notices, and press releases at least monthly.
- Submit your Website to search engines and local directories.
- Submit your Website to the Open Directory Project, and your site will be listed on Google, MSN, and many other popular search engines – not including Yahoo. Also, consider paying for at least one year ($299) for a Yahoo Directory listing. Good news for non-profits – you can submit your site to Yahoo for free!
- Submit your Website to free local listing Websites like Google Maps and Yahoo! Local – this is especially effective if your physical business address is in the same city as your customer base. Then if someone searches for "your product" + "your location", the local listing results will appear above the regular search engine results.
Keep doing SEO to maintain or improve your search engine results.
- After about 2-3 months, repeat step 1 (Web stats) to measure your results. You should be getting more visits to your Website from search engines. What keywords are visitors using to get to your site? What pages are they visiting? Once a month look up and record your web stats and analyze them.
- Keep your site updated frequently with content that is optimized for search engines.
- Periodically do more keyword research and adjust primary keywords for each page if you find something more relevant, popular, and non-competitive.
- Make sure you’re listed in the search engines, local directories, and other Websites that you submitted your site to. Find more of those sites on a regular basis, and submit your site to them.
SEO can be time-consuming but rewarding. You can do it yourself or hire some or all of it out to a web designer who specializes in search engine optimization.
Good luck with SEO and have fun seeing more traffic coming to your Website!
Tags: google analytics, internet marketing strategies, local business listings, Search Engine Optimization, search engine ranking, search engine results, search engine submission, seo, Web Site Analytics (Statistics), web site content development, web site search engine optimization, web site writing
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Analytics (Statistics) | No Comments »
Written by Mediatrunk.com - Colorado Springs Website design and Website marketing company produces real results for clients in Colorado Springs and beyond. Our Website services include custom Website design solutions and Website marketing.
Friday, March 13th, 2009
You’ve invested a lot of your hard-earned money into getting a beautiful, functional web site created for your business. Now what? Is your phone ringing of the hook, or is your email box full from web site leads yet? Unfortunately, this probably isn’t the case with your new web site.
In this article I will explain how you can help search engines find your web site faster - and what things you should avoid doing so you don’t get blacklisted by them or so your web site content doesn’t become invisible to them.
Factors that WILL HELP your web site get found by search engines:
- Age of your web site address - older web sites are seen as more credible by search engines.
- Link popularity - search engines act like a high school: the more friends you have, the more popular you are to them. Get your link on as many local directories, industry specific directories, an individual web sites as you can.
- Number of pages on your web site - the more pages you have, the more content you have and the more interesting you are to search engines.
- Update your web site often - search engines forget about sites that aren’t kept up-to-date. Every so often, edit the text and photos on your site. Better yet, provide new information often. You can create an on-site blog, provide a list of articles of interest to your visitors, write news articles or press releases (and archive them), keep an events list or calendar, and update your photo gallery. It’s also a good idea to summarize new content in your site on your home page - providing links to the new content.
- Submit or resubmit your web site to search engines - when major changes are made to your site, like a redesign or a new page. At the very least, submit your site to a category in the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) - this is what powers Google.
- Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and keyword implementation - this is a very involved process, but some quick tips are:
- Use specific keywords - not general keywords (example: use “organic landscaping service colorado springs”, not “landscaping”)
- Include lots of relevant text copy on your site - and break it up with headers (h1, h2, h3…), bulleted or numbered lists, and linked text.
- Paid search engine inclusion - you can buy ads if you have the budget. Sometimes it is also helpful to buy a paid directory listing with Yahoo (approx $300/year)…even if you don’t renew after that first year.
Factors that will WON’T HELP your web site get found by search engines:
- Keyword spamming - search engines can tell if you are using your keywords excessively and may penalize you for doing this.
- Laying out your pages using tables - any text you put in your tables will be scanned last by the search engines…so design your pages using div tags and stylesheets instead.
- Embedding your text inside images - search engines can only read editable text, not images. If you have to put text in an image, then specify the “alternate text” for the image.
- Dynamic navigation menus that use JavaScript - search engines don’t read text in JavaScript. Create your menus using stylesheets instead.
- Flash and frames content - the text in flash and frames is not easily read by search engines.
- Lengthy page titles, keyword metatags, and description metatags - there is a maximum length for each of theses items, so keep them concise.
- Multiple web sites with duplicate content - doing this can get one or more of your sites blacklisted from the search engines.
- Redirecting one web site address to another web site address - by using anything but a 301 redirect.
- Multiple pages on the same site with duplicate content - search engines consider this spam, so come up with unique content for each page, and write a unique page title for each page too.
- Sharing web server space with a site that has shady content or a questionable reputation - there are tools online you can use to look this up, or you can contact your web site hosting provider to get a list.
- Broken links - check all your links to make sure they lead somewhere.
- Spelling errors - search engines frown upon misspelled words.
- Invalid code - validate all your code to make sure it is compliant with W3C standards.
Tags: Search Engine Optimization, search engine ranking, search engine results, search engine submission, seo
Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »
Written by Mediatrunk.com - Colorado Springs Website design and Website marketing company produces real results for clients in Colorado Springs and beyond. Our Website services include custom Website design solutions and Website marketing.
