Anyone who owns or intends to own a small or medium sized business knows that advertisement is crucial. While word of mouth is generally the best option, internet advertising is incredibly important as well. If your website cannot be found with a simple web search, you are wasting precious resources and losing new clients. With search engine optimization you will be able to solve this problem.
If you are looking to get a better handle on what keywords and phrases to use in SEO, first you have to know which phrases people actually use. Google maintains an AdWords program that will allow you to do this. You enter specific words and phrases, and AdWords will return how many times people have conducted searches for those specific words and phrases.
When you are first starting a website, avoid using sub-domains. Google treats sub-domains as their own site for purposes of assigning them PageRank. Directories from the main site, however, have the same PageRank as the parent site. This means, for instance, that mysite.com/store will have the same PageRank as mysite.com, but store.mysite.com won’t.
Remember that SEO results are rarely instant, so be patient and try not to get discouraged. Because of the way search engine algorithms work, it can sometimes takes months to reap the rewards of today’s effects. As long as the SEO methods you are using are solid, try to think of the work that you are doing today as a long term investment for the future.
Before hiring an SEO company to represent your business, make sure you ask a lot of questions and what risks may be involved. Take a few days and do your own research. In broad terms, “shop around” so you get a sense of what sort of results you should expect from the company you are to deal with.
Avoid using Flash content to help with SEO because it won’t. While it looks great and can be impressive, you are not allowed to link to single pages in a Flash site. For the best results, don’t rely completely on Flash. If you want to use it, do so sparingly.
When optimizing your website, be sure to optimize your description meta tag as well. Some experts believe that keyword meta tags are nearly worthless today, as search engines no longer use them, but that descriptions will usually show up under your page title on the results page, and they are also involved in the indexing process.
Do not be too general with your keywords. These are what will bring readers to your site, so you want to be specific. If you are talking about backpacking through Tahiti, you do not want your keyword to be “travel.” There are thousands of travel sites, and yours will definitely not get the attention it deserves.
Let viral marketing do some of the dirty work for you. Allowing your readers to post reviews and comments is an easy way of bringing your search engine rating higher. Search engines have favorable views of sites that allow commenting and reviewing, so using this method can easily bump you up a few points.
People love to browse through a clearance section for bargains. You could include overstocked items or products nearing the end of their buying season. A dollar section for low priced merchandise can generate a lot of sales, especially if your website offers pop up suggestions for related items from your store. The customers will feel like they are getting a great deal and you will get more sales.
Do not make your site entirely Flash-based. Not only will some people not buy due to device incompatibility, others simply don’t like Flash and will click away from your site quickly. Do, however, use Flash in product or service demonstrations, as they can convert customers. But, have a text description for those who can’t or won’t use Flash.
Getting your website listed by Google and other search engines will guarantee you more visits. List your home page first and add other pages if necessary. Describe your website with the right keyword. The more visits you get, the higher your website will appear in the list of results from a search engine.
Get your business and its website listed in online business directories. Most website owners know to submit their site to the major search engines, which is important. However, many fail to take advantage of the numerous free local business directories. These directories are the equivalent of the local phone book and are used by many potential customers to find local products and services.
When you remove a page from your website, really remove it! Implementing a 301 redirect is great, but search engines may still find the original page through links to it on other sites or even on your own website. Delete all obsolete files from your server when they’re no longer needed.
There are many steps to getting your page noticed, and doing email marketing correctly is part of this. SEO keywords still need to be included, though, and you should also incorporate bookmarking tools. Make it simple for your visitor to send links to friends.
Look for ways to make your site’s HTML code more efficient by optimizing the Meta description tag, which is the second item in your HTML Head section. Content in this section, is typically what searchers see after your site address, when they view a search results page. Your site appears more professional if this section is written as a complete sentence rather than as a list. Keep it under 24 words and do not repeat words.
A great tip for being successful in search engine optimization is don’t try to beat the search engines. Search engines are intelligent and know what sentences and links are. Therefore, you should not attempt to talk about the same things over and over or stuff your website full of keywords. You will fail with this attempt.
By following the tips in this article you will quickly be able to increase your business as well as improve your web traffic. This is a very cheap, if not free way to immediately improve your business, client base, and overall profit. Be sure to not overlook this essential aspect of your company.