The Five Steps to SEO Your Website
Posted on July 17, 2007
Filed Under Online Promotion, SE Optimization, SE Tactics, Uncategorized
Search engines like Google, MS Live and Yahoo are the main way people find websites. So, your site needs to be at the top of the results when people search for what you offer.
How do you get there? Search engine optimisation (SEO):
Step 1 Researching Keywords
What words are your target audience going to type in to a search engine to find your site?
Remember, we are not just talking about single words but two, three and four word phrases. The longer the phrase, the more specific it is and the less competitive it will be to rank for.
Ranking highly for a longer keyword phrase will result in less traffic, but is likely to lead to more conversions, so go after those long, specific search terms. Provided, of course, that they are relevant to your site!
Try the free Digital Point Solutions keyword suggestion tool: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/. This tool accesses the two main providers of search data, Wordtracker and Overture.
You need to find keywords that are not only going to send lots of traffic to your website, but also traffic that is going to convert into sales and clients, traffic relevant to what your site offers.
Step 2 Adding Keywords into Your Web Pages
Once you have the right keywords, they need to be added to your web pages. However, the key phrases you are targeting need to be in the right places within your pages. This is called ‘on-site’ or ‘on-page’ optimisation.
Search engines analyse all the text on a web page, but the text in some parts of a page are more important than others, such as the titles. This is pretty obvious really since a title should neatly summarize what a page is about. Some of the most important parts of a page where keywords should be are:
* The title meta tag.
* The description meta tag.
* The H1 tag.
* The content on the page.
* The anchor text of internal links.
* The filenames of pages.
* The filenames of images.
Step 3 Search Engine Submission
Search engine submission used to be a very important part of SEO, but since links between websites became an important factor in the ranking of sites, and the main way search engines find new sites, submitting to search engines is not really essential.
That said, there are many more search engines, portals and directories other than the big three (Google, MS Live and Yahoo), so an automatic submission tool can be a big help. Do a search for ’search engine submission tools’ for a selection.
You should be able to find a free tool that does the job well, don’t pay silly money for submission services - it is not worth it any more.
Step 4 Building Links to Your Site
Building links to your site is the most important factor in ranking higher in the search engine results. A link from another website to yours is seen as a ‘vote’ for your site by the search engines.
Quality is very important as well as the quantity of links. Links from related pages and sites strengthen the theme and quality of your site.
Another important aspect of links is the anchor text . The anchor text should include the keywords you are targeting (or related keywords).
A few of the main ways you can get links to your site are:
* Getting reviewed by blogs.
* Submitting your site to web directories.
* Writing and submitting articles.
The best (and cheapest) way to get links to your site is to create great content that other sites will want to link to.
Step 5 Monitor Your Success
Once you have optimised your website, it is important to monitor how successful you have been at ranking in the search engines for your targeted keywords.
A site’s rankings can be checked by typing your keywords into search engines and manually seeing where it ranks. However, for multiple keywords and sites this is very laborious. It’s much more efficient to use online tools or special software to check many keywords on several different search engines at the same time.
Digital Point provide an online keyword tracker tool: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/
It is also important to check your website statistics to see how many visitors are coming to your site, what search phrases they have used and which search engines they have come from.
These are the basic steps involved in optimising a site so it will rank in the search engines, but SEO is an ongoing process. You need to continue to build links to your site, add new content and monitor your own, and you competitors rankings.
Provided by http://www.freediyseo.co.uk/ - a free source of SEO help and advice.
