You could be the most ambitious person on the planet when it comes to creating a website with all the bells and whistles that people will love, but unless your visitors can find your site when they search specific terms, your efforts are just going to be wasted. Read these tips and make the most of your efforts.
You should make sure that the search engine optimization you choose, uses a quality and proven technique. Stuffing keywords haphazardly throughout your site won’t do anything but lower your audience’s confidence in your legitimacy. Consider custom-made content that is specific to your business. This will draw in the audience and encourage them to explore the rest of your website.
Think of all keywords related to your site. Even if you don’t attempt to rank for every keyword you can think of, having a list of related keywords can help search engine results by allowing you to make best use of the keyword tag and by giving you even more possible ways to get visitors.
When optimizing your site for Google, do not use “semi spam” copy. Recent Google algorithm changes penalize not only obvious spam (e.g. “Get X@naX from 0verseas”), but also low quality content that has no useful purpose other than to drive visitors to a site. Articles spun by computers are a good example of this kind of content.
Put a sitemap on your webpage. A sitemap is a page that easily links to all available pages on your site, and more importantly how to find them. This feature makes it easier for the search engine spiders to navigate your site. The fewer clicks it takes to find or get to a specific page the better.
One good on-page SEO technique is to use alt tags to describe all the images on your website. By doing this, search engines will be able to index the images and find your pages. This method also has the added benefit of helping website visitors who are using text-only browsers.
Use a keyword tool, such as Google AdWords, to find out what keywords users are searching with to find sites like yours. The tool gives you approximations on the number or searches conducted with any given keyword. This will help you to fine tune your specific key word phrases. Doing so helps to drive the most traffic toward your site.
Take advantage of free code validation programs on the web. You do not want your site to be coded incorrectly, but paying to have it checked could be expensive. Luckily, there are several coding sites available free of charge, to ensure that your website will appear exactly how you want it to, every time.
When people subscribe to your emails, ask them for some basic information like their birthday. Then, every year on their birthday send them a Happy Birthday email. This will create a personal connection and make your customers think you care. If customers think you care about them, they’re more likely to come back for repeat business.
If site protocol allows, include one link inside the body of the article that leads to information on your site. Scammers steal articles and often post them without making any changes. With a link leading to you placed inside the article, even stolen articles can be of benefit to you.
Avoid using Flash, Frames and AJAX on your site. They share a very common problem in that they will not permit linking to a single page. It may look very nice but it could very well inhibit you from making the most out of your webpage. If you must use it, use it sparingly.
If you have a competitor whose SEO performance you would like to emulate, find out how many visitors the competitor’s site draws from the search engine results pages. If you intend to combat the competitor head-to-head, this gives you a goal for your own efforts. If you simply want to keep pace with the pack, you can use the competitor’s traffic as a yardstick
As mentioned at the start of this article, it’s very important that you do not allow your efforts to go to waste. Learning the proper optimization tactics for the search engines out there is how your site or business goes from a simple start-up to being a legitimate and popular brand online. Use the tips you’ve just read to your advantage in SEO.