Some visitors will visit your site, because you wisely included it on your business card or added it to your email signature, but most of your visitors will come from search engines.
If you want people to find your personal home page when they search for your name, and for some reason your site doesn’t appear in the most popular search engine results, at worst it will be a little less famous and a little more upset.
But, it is much more serious if you are responsible for maximizing the number of potential customers who visit your company’s website, so that they can buy items from your company’s catalog online. If for some reason search engines show your competitors’ sites before your company’s, then it could mean the difference between your company making or losing money, and getting promoted to a corner office or relegated to the back office. corner of a street.
The enormous popularity of search engines among Internet users is the main reason why commercial companies, especially those whose income is derived mainly or exclusively from online sales, are willing to invest significant resources to improve their websites. and get top rankings within search engines. listings This practice, and now profession, of “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO), is a critical component of online marketing.
How the search engine works
There are hundreds of factors that go into when search engines rank websites in an organic search. Amazingly, they can analyze billions of pieces of data in just 0.5 seconds! The actions you take to optimize your site will have a direct effect on your SEO ranking. Components like H1 tags, words used in your website’s meta description, content and keyword density, permalinks, and backlinks are some of the many things you can leverage to improve your rankings.
H1 tags: These are the larger headers you use to title your content. For example, the H1 for this article would be the title, ‘The Basics of Search Engine Optimization’. This article page may appear in Google search results when someone searches for keywords that are present in the H1 tag such as ‘SEO’ and ‘SEO Basics’. Make sure your H1 tags are relevant to the keywords you want to appear for.
keyword density: This is the number of times the keyword your audience is searching for appears on your website. Be sure to mention your keywords, not only in your H1 tags, but also in the body of your content. While you want to include your keywords often, don’t overload your content. Remember, Google will also consider the use of identical keywords.
First, develop a list of all the phrases you can think of that people might use to find your site: short phrases that best describe your business. Then narrow that list down to the two dozen most likely phrases. If you’re having trouble building a keyword list, take a look at Wordtracker, which is designed to help you optimize your keyword list. Right now, they offer a free trial.
These keywords can and should be placed in the text of each page, which is visible to anyone viewing the page in a web browser. Additionally, keywords can be placed in image headers, subtitles, captions, alt text attributes of images (), page titles, and anywhere else that seems appropriate.
meta description: This is the description you provide to search engines in your HTML tags. The meta description you use for your website should also include the keywords you want your target audience to search for.
You should keep this in mind when wondering why some or all of the search engines seem to be ignoring your new website. It’s just a needle in a huge haystack. But don’t lose hope
permalinks: This refers to permanent URL links that are specific to your website. It is advantageous to include your keywords in these permalinks in order to be considered for higher ranking on Google. For example, if you have a gardening website and you want your consumers to find the keywords “lawn products”, it would be optimal for you to have a page with a permalink like: http://www.gardening.com/lawn-products.
backlinks: This is when other websites link to yours by providing your audience with the URL of your website. For example, if Forbes mentions your business on their website and includes a link for their readers to your website, this would be considered a backlink. The more of these you have, the better your chances of ranking higher for your keywords. However, the source of your backlinks also influences ranking. Google values quality and the bigger the source your backlink comes from (i.e. Forbes, NY Times, .gov addresses, etc.), the better chance you have of ranking higher in your engine optimization search.
Desktop vs Mobile Search Engine Optimization: Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?
Search engines are constantly evolving and changing their algorithm to keep up with constantly developing new technologies. With the rise of mobile devices, more and more people are searching on the go. Google has noticed the increase in mobile traffic from its users and has released a new addition to its search ranking metrics. If your website is not mobile friendly (responsive, optimized to be viewed on various mobile screen sizes), Google will rank your website lower in search rankings. However, this will only affect your mobile search ranking. Search rankings from a non-mobile device such as a desktop or laptop will not be affected. This is something to keep in mind if you know your specific target market is more likely to search for your keywords on a mobile device (i.e. your product is a mobile app).
SSL certificate. Google recently put websites that have SSL certificates into consideration. Consider purchasing an SSL certificate today. Uniquenameregistration.com offers various SSL certificates at a good price.
Site design and other factors
While incorporating well-targeted keywords within your site is recognized as the most valuable SEO technique, there are other elements that pay off: smart site design, reciprocal links, and compelling page content. To make your site as welcoming to search engine spiders as possible: arrange pages and links in a logical hierarchy, opt for CSS divs instead of nested tables, use text instead of images for navigation links (or at least have pristine image alt values) and include a sitemap (which serves as an index of links to your pages) if the site has more than a dozen pages.
Proper reciprocal linking is when two or more sites link to each other, as a natural result of each site’s surrounding content. This is quite different, and much more effective, than so-called “link farms”, which are simply pages with no content containing nothing but links to paying customer sites. Search engine companies figured out that trick a long time ago. So, paying someone to link to your site among thousands of others would not only be a waste of your money, but it can also quickly penalize your site in search results, or even blacklist you for complete.
The best way to attract new visitors to your site, whether they are humans or spiders, is to offer quality free content. This will encourage human visitors to check back often for new content and also to post links to your site on their own sites and blogs. This invariably increases the esteem of your site by the search engines. Having fresh content that matches your specific keywords and phrases will also result in higher rankings in search engines, because they always examine the words within the context of the surrounding material.
Your SEO strategy should be a long-term process
Getting placed on the first page of a Google search doesn’t happen overnight. Your SEO strategy should be an ongoing process. As technology develops, search engines are also adapting to these changes by altering their algorithms that define how your website ranks. Stay on top of your SEO strategy and make sure it’s up to date.
Your SEO strategy will go a long way for you and your business with proper maintenance. Not only will you have your current customer base, but you can also passively increase traffic to your website by being present in the top 5 searches for your keywords. Customers will be able to find you and your business easily when searching for relevant information related to your business. A good rule of thumb to stay on top of your SEO strategy is to research the tactics used by your competitors. Search Google for your own keywords and see who ranks in the top 5 searches, then analyze their websites to see how and why they rank in the top.
Search engine optimization is an increasingly important component of smart website promotion. While an article may only touch on the main topics within SEO, you can probably already see how important these methods are in improving your site’s ranking within search engine rankings, and therefore in the eyes of of Internet users for whom “Google” is now a verb. .