To some people, SEO is the great panacea.
It’s the key to unlocking the enormous potential of the internet. For others, however, it’s a little more complicated and perhaps not quite so clear cut: the idea of optimising a website makes absolute sense, what’s not so obvious is how you go about achieving this. So, is there any simple way of making your website as effective as you’d like it to be? Are there any simple steps businesses can take to make optimisation work for them?
Keyword research.
Like it or loathe it, keyword research is at the heart of any seo package. It’s what drives the strategy and what ultimately determines the level of traffic visiting your site. Any business should use tools like Google Keyword Tool, Google Insight and Suggestions. It needs to know what browsers are searching for, and what the most popular terms of search reference are. Businesses need to research this area extensively and decide both what keywords to target, and most importantly of all, how to make these keywords work for you.
Optimised original content.
Given a choice, web browsers will always prefer to read original and interesting content: it’s far more relevant and grabs the attention of both the reader and the search engine crawlers. However, there are certain ‘rules’ that need to be bourn in mind when writing content for any website. Any article needs to be underpinned by keywords as they are what drives the piece and makes it relevant. Keyword density is a matter for great conjecture: some commentators would argue you should use as many keywords as possible to ensure that your content is noticed by the spiders – others would suggest the opposite. It is, in truth, a grey area, but the consensus would seem to suggest that the best level of keyword density lies in the range of 2 to 5% of the total article. It’s best to stick to 2 or 3 essential keywords, rather than adopting a scatter gun approach and hoping one or two of them might hit the mark. Choose your most important keyword and start and end your article/content blog with it.
Optimising your web pages.
Anyone optimising a web site should be bear in mind that search engine spiders only read and analyse the HTML content of the web page. Therefore it’s crucially important to make sure these search engine crawlers are directed to the right part of the relevant page. The best way of doing this is to include keywords in the title and the description. You can also add additional keywords where appropriate in other areas of the same page. Don’t forget to use H1 to H6 tags when using these keywords, and try to place Alt tags on any images you might use.
Article directories.
There’s no quicker way of helping your website grow organically than by submitting content and articles to directories. The more content you share with article directories; the quicker you’ll be picked up by the search engine crawlers. Obviously, as mentioned above, the articles have to be relevant and of interest to the reader. Don’t forget to leave anchor texts so that readers can come to your website as well, and also use them for the internal pages of your website. Once your website’s internal pages cache is known to the search engines, then your profile will grow even quicker.
Social bookmarking.
Many businesses are reluctant to get involved with the social media, as they see it as frivolous and irrelevant. However, any business that doesn’t make the most of every opportunity is potentially making a mistake. Social bookmarking really can add value to your business and raise your profile.
Join as many social bookmarking sites as you can like Facebook, Twitter, dig and delicious, and bookmark your own articles and press releases. Be social and make friends, and be sure to share your bookmarks. Social media sites are well optimised and are cached by search engine crawlers every day. If you are linked to these sites, then it makes sense that your profile will soon be recognised through association.
