Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is part art, part science. Don’t let the term confuse you. SEO is simply the mechanics and tools of helping seekers find your business site via search engines like Yahoo or Google. They also find you via other sites and blogs and building relationships in social media land helps also. You an have a professional site review done, but most of the tweaking can be done by you, and it is generally free and easy.
In many ways, all of your online activity is Search Engine Optimization. Any time a potential client searches for your type of business and your firm or company comes up, that is search engine optimized. Whether it is your Facebook page, an article you wrote as CEO of Widgets, Inc., or a blog post about payroll accounting, all of it feeds the search engines. The more of these individual items there are to find, the better your chances of being found!
Search engines search for keywords. Keywords are those key terms in the text of your site or blog that define your business and what you do. When you look over your site, notice areas like About Us, What We Do, even Contact Us for content you improve. And when it comes to blogging, keep in mind that just saturating your posts with keywords is NOT effective. You must have something to say that is well-written to entice readers to actually engage with your site.
It’s hard to believe but small changes like renaming your Web site headers from “Categories” to “Topics” can make a difference on driving traffic deeper into your site. The more visitors and the longer they stay, the higher your ranking on search engines. Watch your site analytics to see if these changes make a difference in how much time visitors stay or if they go to additional areas. All of this can make small but significant differences.
Blogging can drive new readers and additional traffic to your company Web site. Blogging consistently is more important than blogging daily and writing about topics appropriate for your customers can increase optimize your search engine results because it provides more search terms. If you are an HVAC installation and repair firm and you blog about green options for cooling your home, anyone searching for this would find your company via your blog. You can outsource blogging inexpensively to a freelance writer or task an interested employee to do it.
Have your Web designer or manager (or yourself, if that is you) examine and modify some of your meta tags. Meta tags are small pieces of code embedded in your site that tell search engines something about your content. Your company might be called Don King Accounting and Payroll, but your meta tag might read “affordable accounting for individuals and small business”. Changing the wording of this meta tag can draw additional traffic to your site.
You’ve seen many sites, or you have one, that opens with a flash animation sequence. These are fun but actually confuse search engine crawlers, causing them to overlook your site. You can certainly add flash features, just save it for another page or don’t use them at all. A well-crafted and designed home page with the right information and keywords is enough.
There is an easy way to both improve your traffic and build rapport with other site owners on the Internet. It is called hyperlinking. Adding links to other sites or blogs on yours associates you with the traffic their site generates, adds solid content to your site and offers you the opportunity to interact with other site owners. Additionally, they are likely to link back to your site, giving you visibility with a whole new group of readers.
When someone goes online to find a business, search engine optimization facilitates this process. Business owners should have some knowledge about how this works and what they can do to improve their rankings on major search engines. It is simple and we provide suggestions that you should be able to implement yourself for little or no cost. It isn’t hard to learn but the payoffs in increased traffic can be significant!
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