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By Barry Fenning
If you are professional with your search engine optimization
efforts and keep your customer in mind before you start
considering “what the search engines will think” you will reap
a lot more than what you sow. Chances are, if your visitors
like your website, there is a very good likelihood that the
search engines will like it too.
With this in mind the following 10 tips focus on how to
develop
your website with your visitors in mind whilst also conducting
effective search engine optimization activities.
1. Pick appropriate keyword phrases
This is the single most important thing to do when it comes to
optimizing your website for search engines. The words and
phrases that your potential customers type into the major
search engines are the keywords your site should be using
within the specific areas of your webpage (see below;
Optimizing your Page Titles and Optimizing your Content).
There
are a number of useful keyword research tools available on the
web such as Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery (both offer
trial
versions).
However, if you want to find out accurate figures of how many
people are searching for your targeted keywords per
week/month/year run a Google Adwords and/or Overture campaign
and you will get extremely accurate figures of search engine
traffic whilst (hopefully) generating income that will pay for
your research.
2. Optimize every page on your website
Optimizing each webpage is overlooked by so many websites and
can be the difference between competing for a highly
competitive keyword phrase such as “Irish Hotels” on your home
page and competing for a much less competitive keyword phrase
such as “Hotels in County Galway” on another relevant landing
page. After that they can check out the rest of your website
that is all about “Irish Hotels”.
3. Optimizing your Page Titles
All of the major search engines have 100’s of different
algorithms that compute where your webpage should be listed
for
different keyword searches. Putting your keywords within the
title description tag of your pages is one of the most
important SEO techniques and will help your website climb
through the rankings and allow your visitors to remember
exactly what your page is all about when they save it to their
“favorites”.
4. Optimizing your Page Content
It is sometimes very difficult to write content for your
website. Not only do you need to put the information you want
the visitor to see in front of them in an easy-to-read style,
you also have to keep in mind the keywords your page is
targeting so that you can rank better within search engines.
One of the best pieces of advice I have come across is to
write
for your visitors and include the keywords as much as makes
sense. Read what you have written out loud to yourself and a
few others. If it sounds stupid… lather, rinse, and repeat.
5. Create an inbound linking strategy
Submitting your site to website and article directories is a
very beneficial way to drive targeted traffic to your website.
Links within these sites not only brings visitors to your
website, but search engine “spiders” are easily able find your
website and index your pages within their results. If your
site
doesn’t have a link pointing to it on the World Wide Web the
search engines will never find it and you will never see any
traffic from Google or the other big ones.
6. Descriptively labeling your links and images (aka the
anchor
text)
This technique is both common sense and good practice. Telling
your visitors what the link that they are going to click on
allows them to know exactly what they are going to be directed
to. Saying “click here” is not enough to help them understand
what they're going to find once they click through. Be as
descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on
your site. When writing your anchor text and alt attributes
you
can almost always describe the page you're pointing to by
using
its main keyword phrase which is a major factor that search
engines take into account when it comes to ranking your web
pages.
7. Make sure your site is spider-friendly
Your website may look fantastic. You and your web designer may
be talented graphic designers who can make Flash and
JavaScript
dazzle your visitors with a show that would put Michael
Flatley
and his River Dance to shame. However, if your website
contains
Flash and Javascript it’s important to know that search engine
spiders have difficulty reading this code (or appreciate the
effort you put into the design). The way around this is to
provide navigation alternatives such as static links and a
site
map to allow the spiders crawl deep within your website and
index the web pages within their results. Overuse of Flash,
JavaScript, and images can also lead to your web pages being
very slow to download. If these file types are used sparingly
your visitors and search engines will appreciate your efforts
a
lot more.
8. Create Fresh Content
When you are optimizing your website properly you will see a
trend. If you are doing something that benefits your websites
visitors then the search engines will reward you for it.
Blogs and forums are effective and easy ways of adding new
information to your site on a regular basis. However, if your
only purpose of setting up a blog or a forum is for better
search engine rankings then there really is no point in doing
it. Only add a forum if it contributes something beneficial to
your website and if you have the traffic to make it
interactive
enough for visitors to return to it. And, only add a blog if
you
have something of interest to say on a regular basis. Once you
have your blog and/or forum up-and-running you should optimize
them with the same professionalism you do with any other page
on your website.
9. Do not think that you can trick Search Engines
As noted before, “If you are doing something that benefits
your
websites visitors then the search engines will reward you for
it”.
If you try to trick the search engines by hiding keyword
phrases, joining link farms, or any other sneaky practice your
sites will be removed from the search engines and it will take
you a long time to get back in (and you will also have to
spend
more time cleaning up your website before they will accept
you).
10. Offer something unique
If your website offers something that is unique and
interesting
to your target market and it is properly optimized (by
applying
all of the techniques listed above) you will not only rank
well
within the major search engines, you will also get the added
benefit of people linking to your website in forums, blogs,
and
through other websites which will send your site more visitors
and create more inbound links which will help it rank higher.
Remember it’s human visitors that you are trying to impress,
not search engine robots.
About The Author: Barry Fenning is the owner of
www.betteririshwebsites.com The articles available on
this website are suitable for people that want to learn how to
conduct effective SEO campaigns. Please include this bio for
article reproduction permission.
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