Considering Search Engine Optimization? Read This Article Now!
Search engine optimization sounds very intimidating to users new to online marketing or web design and maintenance. However, with a bit of education and research, search engine optimization can be done efficiently and effectively by anyone. Read these suggestions for a few ways to make your site stand out more in search results and improve your site traffic.
If you want searchers to find you, you need to be consistently providing them with content – high-quality substance rich in the keywords they are looking for. This sounds elementary if you are not regularly providing content to your blog or site, and if it does not contain the keywords you want your audience to find, you simply won’t get found in searches.
Although there are many search engines out there, you should focus on the big three and leave the rest alone, to start. Google, Yahoo and Bing are the big boys on the block, with Google controlling the lion’s share of the market. So when optimizing your site, stick to the types of things a search engine like Google appreciates. There’s no sense in optimizing for Ask or MSN when there’s really no money there.
Make sure you didn’t forget to leave the robots.txt set. In many cases, when a site is in development, web designers will use a robots.txt file to prevent search engines from indexing the site at all. Some of these same web designers forget to remove the robots.txt file when the site goes live. If you know what date your site is going live, one tip is a create a cron job that deletes the robots.txt file automatically on the designated date.
Use alt tags for images and span element titles to your advantage. Search engines look at a site’s code, not what is actually visible to a user, so if your keyword is “cat” and there is a picture of a calico cat on your site, using an alt tag of “a calico cat” for the image will expose the search engine to your keyword even if the user never sees it. The title of a span element works in the same way.
To make sure your search engine optimization is working, you should regularly check your website’s page rank. Google updates its page rankings several times a year and if you don’t see improvement, it could be a sign that what you’re doing isn’t working. For more regularly updated page rank information, you can check Alexa.
Though it is possible to maintain a website’s rank in the market when you change a site’s content, complete niche change is not recommended. Especially if your good rank has been caused by past link exchange activities. When you completely change your site you may cause those links to error and null your previous ranking.
Make sure to use keywords in your URL. You can either include them in your domain name, but if you do not wish to change the name of your site, you can also use keywords in the directory path, or in the file names if you offer material that can be downloaded.
Always do keyword research. Selecting the right keywords is the most fundamental part of SEO and by doing initial keyword research, you can save a lot of time and money. If you don’t do any keyword research, you could end up wasting months optimizing for keywords that nobody searches for or keywords that have really tough competition.
One of the basics of search engine optimization is the formulation of an outstanding keyword phrase for each individual page on your website. Refrain from trying to optimize your complete website around one specific keyword or phrase. You will achieve a better ranking by centering your writing on each page around a specific keyword or keyword phrase.
While having relevant and popular keywords is key for proper search engine optimization, it is very important not to stuff your pages with keywords. Search engines take note of pages that are overly stuffed with keywords as a means to get higher search result rankings and penalize them accordingly. Make sure your page does not fall into this category.
As discussed earlier, search engine optimization does not have to be scary or intimidating regardless of how little experience you have with building or maintaining websites. Follow the tips in this article to find ways to optimize your search engine results easily and effectively. You can improve your site’s ranking in search results with just a little effort and education.
