Friday, March 22, 2013

How Search Engine Optimization Works Can Work For You

By Brett Saltis


If you're like most people with a website, you started it because you want to share something with people. But if no one is looking at your website, how will that happen? The best way to get people to notice you is by using search engine optimization, or SEO. Here are a few methods to implement so that you can reach the people you'd like to reach.

While you may have a good website no website is perfect. Once you accept this, and begin to look for any flaws in your design, you can improve upon them and maximize your business output. Never stop trying to improve your business and website and you can attract more visitors.

For more technical and current insight into your competitors' keywords and site content, visit each of your individual competitors' pages and view the source page. The information contained in the pages' code should help you to identify which keywords your competitors are using to bring in your target market.

Your anchor text, also known as a hyperlink, should be infused with highly relevant content and valuable keywords. Optimizing your site requires you to omit generic hyperlink text like "Read More" or "Click Here". These phrases do your site no favors in search results ranking. Using keywords improves your site's on-page link integrity.

When you create your list of keywords to use on your site for search engine optimization, make sure to check how popular each word is on Google. There is no point in writing about how to clean a kettle if no one actually searches for that topic. Choose niche key phrases which get many hits with targeted readers.

To keep from being categorized as a spam site by major search engines, moderate comments on your site. Spammers frequently use the comments section of popular sites to spam links to their own sites. When search engines see these links, they read it as spam being posted on your own site. Moderating comments will let you prevent these comments from ever being posted.

You should avoid 404 errors at all costs. A 404 error happens when a user attempts to visit a page that no longer exists or never existed in the first place. When you update pages with new links, be sure to use a 301 redirect. The redirect will automatically take the user to the new link when they arrive at the old one.

Ensure that the architecture of your website makes sense. Search engine optimization will drive traffic to your website, but if the user gets lost once they're there you won't make any money off them, and they certainly won't be back. Don't get fancy, just get serious - keep it simple!

A great tip for search engine optimization is to put the URL of your most preferred page into the sitemaps. Doing this will prevent duplicate pages by placing the right one to be included in search engines. Duplicate pages can create problems when trying to get the most out of SEO.

To make your website's linking structure give you good search engine results, avoid deep linking hierarchies, unless you are comfortable with your low-level pages performing poorly on the results pages. Deep linking means using many nested sub-directories to organize your content. Search engines are unlikely to burrow more than two or three sub-directories deep, so make sure pages at that depth are not page that you want to optimize for the search engines.

Be sure to use a title that is both unique and relevant to the content of your page. Include this title on every page of your site because it is the single most important search engine optimization factor of your site. Your title is likely to come up on a search engine before any of the text in your site will.

Use the right keywords. By researching the right keywords to use, you will make sure that search engines rank you for the subject you want to be ranked for. Do keyword research first to make sure you are using keywords that people actually search for; don't go by your own guesses.

To rank higher in results from a search engine, include links to exterior websites in your content. Make sure you link to websites that don't compete against you, and have content relevant to your site. For instance, you can link to an informational article or to a video.

If you are considering consolidating two or more similar pages, you should first identify the relative quantity and quality of your inbound links. This can be done by using the simple command "link:domain.com/yourpage.html"� from the Google search page. Yahoo Site Explorer offers a similar option for checking specific back links.

Instead of posting duplicate content on your website, link to the original from wherever you need the content to be. Internal links can help boost your page rank, just make sure to use different keyword-rich anchor tags on each link to ensure that you're getting all the link juice you can.

It is important to stay committed when you are trying to move your site up the search engine listings. You cannot place content on your site and then walk away if you want to have true success. You need to keep up with the ever-changing search engine's algorithms if you want your site to skyrocket to the top of the results page.

Avoid using Flash content to help with SEO because it won't. While it looks great and can be impressive, you are not allowed to link to single pages in a Flash site. For the best results, don't rely completely on Flash. If you want to use it, do so sparingly.

Although your efforts may not have been as fruitful as you would have liked in the past, by applying the tips from this article you take steps to ensure future success.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment