Even if you strategically place your website’s URL on your business card and e-mail signature, most of your site’s visits will come from organic search engine results.
If your homepage isn’t coming up in the results of most major search engines when people look for your name, you’ll probably end up a little less famous and a lot more disappointed.
But the stakes are much higher if you’re in charge of increasing traffic to your company’s website so that more people can shop from your catalog. Your company’s success or failure, as well as your rise or fall in the corporate hierarchy, may hinge on whether or not search engines prioritize your site over your competitors.
Businesses, especially those whose income is almost entirely on online sales, are willing to spend a lot of time and money optimizing their websites to rank highly in search engine results because of the enormous traffic these pages receive. Online marketing would be incomplete without the practice and now a “search engine optimization” (SEO) profession.
Functioning of a Search Engine
When performing an organic search, search engines consider hundreds of parameters before displaying the results. Incredibly, they can process half a second’s worth of billions of data points! The SEO results you get are directly related to your efforts to optimize your site. Some factors contributing to a website’s search engine rankings are heading 1 (H1) tags, the words used in the meta description, content and keyword density, permalinks, and backlinks.
The H1 tag is used for the most essential titles in your content. ‘The Basics of Search Engine Optimization’ is the H1 for this article. Searches for terms like “SEO” and “Basics of SEO” in the H1 tag may bring up this article page in the results. Ensure the keywords you want to rank for are included in the H1 tags.
The keyword density of a website is the percentage of the total number of words on the site that contain the target keyword phrase. Use your keywords not just in the H1 tags but also in the text itself. You should use your keywords frequently, but not too often. Remember that Google will also look at how you utilize similar words.
First, jot down all the possible search terms visitors might use to locate your site, including any short phrases that accurately characterize your company. Then, narrow that down to a manageable twenty or so words. Check out Wordtracker, a tool specifically for optimizing keyword lists if you’re having trouble with a list of keywords. There is now a free demo available.
Each page’s text, accessible via a web browser, is where these keywords should be placed. The keywords may also be included in the page titles, headings, subheadings, image captions, alternative text attributes (img alt=”>), and anyplace else you feel they belong.
In the meta> tags of your HTML code, you should include a description for search engines to use. Include keywords that your target audience might use to find your site in the meta description you create.
Remember if you’re baffled about why your brand-new website isn’t getting any traction in the SERPs. It’s like trying to find a needle in a vast haystack. But it would be best if you didn’t lose faith.
Permalinks are links to your website’s unique URLs that will remain active indefinitely. If you want to improve your search engine rankings, you should use permalinks that incorporate keywords. If you own a gardening website and you want people to find your “lawn products,” a page with a permalink like a target=”_blank” rel=”nofollow” href=”http://www.gardening.com/lawn-products”>http://www.gardening.com/lawn-products/a> would be ideal.
Getting backlinks means that other websites are directing their visitors to your site. A backlink can occur, for instance, if Forbes writes about your company and provides a link to your site for their visitors. The more your supply of these, the better your chances of climbing the keyword rankings. On the other hand, the authority of the websites that link to you matters as well. If you can get a backlink from a reputable site, such as Forbes, the New York Times, a.gov address, etc., Google is more likely to give you a higher search engine ranking.
How well does your site perform on mobile devices regarding search engine optimization?
Search engines regularly update their ranking algorithms to accommodate the rapid pace of technological change. Mobile devices have allowed more people to conduct searches while out and about. Due to the rise in mobile usage, Google has implemented new criteria for determining search engine rankings. Google will give your website a lower search engine ranking if it is not mobile-friendly (responsive, optimized for viewing on various mobile screen sizes). Your mobile search ranks will be the only ones impacted by this. Rankings in searches performed on a desktop or laptop computer will not be affected. If your product is a mobile app, and you know that most of your target audience uses mobile devices for internet access, this is something to bear in mind.
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Website Layout and Other Considerations
While it’s true that strategically placing keywords throughout your site is the most beneficial SEO strategy, other factors, such as a well-designed site, links from related sites, and engaging content, can also help. Suppose your site has more than a dozen pages. In that case, you should include a site map (an index of links to your pages) and use text links instead of images for the navigation (or at least have flawless image alt values) to make it as user- and search-engine-friendly as possible.
Appropriate reciprocal linking occurs when links between sites arise organically from the context of each site. This is in contrast to and more successful than so-called “link farms,” which are essentially empty pages that carry connections to the areas of paying clients. Businesses in the search engine industry wised up to that tactic long ago. Therefore, it would be a waste of money to pay someone to include links to your site among thousands of others, and doing so may result in swift penalties in the search results or even a complete blacklisting of your site.
Free, high-quality material is the best approach to attract new visitors, both humans and spiders. Human visitors will return more often to check for updates and spread the word about your site by including links to it on their pages and blogs. Search engines will have a higher opinion of your site as a result. Search engines always look at words in context, so having new content that fits your desired keywords and phrases will also result in higher ranks.
Your SEO plan needs to be an ongoing procedure.
It takes time and effort to reach the top of Google’s search results. Your search engine optimization plan should be an ongoing procedure. Search engine algorithms, which determine where your website falls in the rankings, evolve with technological advances. Maintain an up-to-date SEO strategy that you monitor regularly.
With regular upkeep, your SEO strategy will continue to bring in customers and boost sales. If your site appears in the top five results for your target keywords, you’ll retain your current clientele and begin to accumulate new visitors passively. Customers will have no trouble locating you and your company when searching for information about your company. If you want to stay on top of your SEO strategy, it’s a good rule of thumb to look into the methods employed by your competitors. Look for your keyword(s) on Google and see who comes up in the top 5 results; then, check out those sites to learn how and why they cut.
Brilliant website promotion increasingly incorporates search engine optimization. While this essay can only scratch the surface of search engine optimization (SEO), you should see how crucial these techniques are to raising your site’s profile in the eyes of the millions of people who use “Google” as a verb.
Dr. Olusola Coker, of http://hostleonard.com fame, is a webmaster, linux server administrator, and system analyst.
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