Because of the changing nature of search engines SEO is complicated. But here are the five basic things that should be done with any site regardless. Things that will boost the ranking of just about any site.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is actually many techniques or processes all designed to help your site rank well in the search engine results. Ideally on page 1 position 1.
These processes involve adjusting various parts of the site (in terms of code, content and links) to hopefully gain a higher position and so increase traffic. Generally all SEO concentrates on the big 3 search engines ie Google, Yahoo! and Bing.
What Do These Search Engines Look For?
The Search engines use a computer programs called “bots,” or “spiders”. These bots follow links through the internet and record what they find at each web page. This data is later assesses and the resultant webpage results generated.
Each search engine assess these pages in a different way. Hence why the top ten results for any given search are not the same in each search engine. This can make life complicated as it’s hard to perfectly optimise for all 3. Fortunately they have more in common than they do different so it’s not quite as bad as it sounds.
All the search engines look at a web page it has just spidered and assess it in terms of
Relevance: what’s the site about and does the actual content of the site relate to its title or headings of the content and HTML tags.
Popularity: importance is measured by the number of times other sites link back to it – called backlinks. But it’s not just number of backlinks it’s also who they are from. When they come from a highly respected and relevant site, they carry more weight. This tells you links from a (say) gambling site back to a (say) CD site are of little value.
Five Simple Steps to Boost your Site Ranking
Because of the changing nature of search engines SEO is complicated. But there are five basic things that should be done with any site regardless. Things that will boost the ranking of just about any site.
1) Use Good, Unique Content in Your Site
Search engines want to provide their search queries with quality results. So make your site informative and useful and they will like your site more than a site that’s thin on the data. Update the content frequently as well. A good way to do this is add a blog and post to it regularly
2) Research and use Keywords Correctly
Don’t just aim for the most generic high volume keyword relating to your site. Do proper keyword research and work out what your prospective customers are really typing in. Optimise around these phrases by using them in your page titles, headings and text. But keep is natural -it still has to make sense! Try and focus each page of your site around a specific small group of related keyword rather than try and get everything on one page
3) Create a Sitemap
Remember spiders/ bots follow links. A Sitemap can help by telling them what links you want them to see on your site – links to pages they might might miss otherwise. Whilst on the subject of links, try and structure your site so it’s not too deep. Ideally any page should be no more than three clicks from the homepage. Google Webmaster Tools , helps you to create sitemaps and submit them to Google. And it’s f ree!
4) Create Backlinks from relevant sites with Strong Anchor Text. Link Deep
Get links back to your site from related directories, blogs, forums and associated sites Use proper anchor text.. the anchor text is the wording displayed in a hyperlink. It should be be based on the keyword or phrase you are trying to rank well for.
Eg I might use a hyperlink like this for my web design site. Cheap Web Design to help increase the ranking for the phrase cheap web design. Notice that I didn’t link to my home page but to a page specifically written about cheap web design. This is called deep linking.
The rule here is send the link to the most relevant page ( might not be the home page) using keyword rich anchor text.
5) Submit Your Site to Search Engines
Some people miss this step saying the search engines will find you anyway. This might be true. But it doesn’t do any harm to let them know you exist anyway.
6) Outsource it (okay I know I said 5 steps.. this one’s a bonus!)
You probably think the above steps 1 to 5 could be quite time consuming and even a bit tricky, and you’d be right!! If time is short (isn’t it always) you would be better to call in an SEO expert. Be sure of what you want as prices vary from a thousand dollars one-off costs to many thousands of dollars per month ongoing. So do your research and know what it is you want and expect before committing to anything. And remember if you are looikng for
affordable SEO services – get a quote from me as well!
Summary
SEO is very important and should be done as soon as possible or as the site is being built. It needn’t be (too) expensive and its potential returns are huge.
So just do it .. or contact me if you need help
Regards
Ronald Sayegh
Website Design Specialist
for website design you can afford
