Five Effective Ways to Optimize Your Website for the Search Engines

On the internet, Search Engine Optimization determines your website’s status. In most cases, it determines whether you get respected or shoved aside. Although content is regarded as “king” on the internet, if your website is not optimized for the search engines, then hardly anyone will see what your website header looks like.

Creating a website with search engine appeal can be challenging, especially with the frequently changing updates by Google. But if you want a steady stream of search engine traffic, then you can’t ignore this.

Just in case you’re wondering, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the method of optimizing your website to rank higher for specific keywords in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Being that all internet users search for information via any of these search engines, getting your site to be among the search results is a must. Well, this is only if you want search engine traffic to be a significant part of your traffic stats.

We all can’t rank number one on these search engines, but there are specific processes to undergo that will get your website search engine ready.

1. Do Your Keyword Research

You need to know the exact words or phrases that would bring new customers to your website. Internet users use keywords to search for information and the results only include websites that contain such keywords. So how then can you make your keyword research effective?

• Think of Phrases and Not Just Words: Keyword phrases allow you to compete for more than just one keyword. For example, let’s assume the keyword “writing” is a highly competitive one. Optimizing your website for a keyword phrase such as “writing online for traffic” allows you to compete for “writing”, “writing online”, “writing for traffic”, “traffic” and “writing online for traffic”. That’s a 5-in-1 advantage for you.
• Use Keyword Tools: You can think up all possible phrases but tools like the Google Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) could help you out. It comes up with different keyword suggestions for a specific keyword for you to research on chosen keyword phrases.
• Know Your Competition: After doing your research, you may think a specific keyword phrase is the right one. Enter that phrase into the Google search engine and check the Page Ranks of the websites in the first result page. If they are of Page Rank 4-7 and your website is of Page Rank 2, do more keyword research because it could take a while to get on the first page.

2. Optimize Your Page Tags and Description

Keyword research is usually the first thing to do, after which you get to face your website. Optimizing your page title is pretty simple and doesn’t require any advanced html skills. Page titles need to be optimized because they are what appear in search results, along with the description. If your keywords are not included in your title tag and meta description, you might miss out on some traffic.

Page titles and description should not just be optimized for search engines alone but also for end users. Don’t just write a bunch of keywords but construct them in a way that would make people click. The good thing is you don’t have to do this all by yourself. There are online analyzers (http://www.metatags.org/meta_tags_code_generator) to help you out.

3. Have Optimized and Quality Content

Content is the main part of your website and the whole concept of SEO eventually boils down to this. What happens when a Googler clicks through to your site, only to find crappy content? It means no readers, no leads and definitely no sales. Your content must be informative and be targeted towards the needs and benefits of your customers.

Search engine spiders also crawl website content; therefore you need to include your chosen keywords in your content as well. However, including excessive and unnecessary keywords in your content is not ideal. This is called keyword stuffing and it attracts a penalty from Google (http://moneyctl.com/seo/keyword-stuffing-penalty-and-how-to-fix-it/). This leads to a drop in rankings but the good thing is that it can be removed.

Always include your keywords in your title, your introduction, sub headings in the body as well as your conclusion. Space your keywords out through your content.

4. Get Quality Backlinks

In other words, tap from the search engine glory of other websites. The more quality backlinks you have, the more search engine traffic you get. Getting quality backlinks to your website is just like advertising and one effective way to do this is via guest blogging.

Guest blogging is simply offering to write content on other blogs in your niche with a link in your author’s bio back to your website. The key to making guest blogging work for you is to look and write for authority blogs in your niche. That is, blogs that has lots of loyal readers, good Page Rank and quality traffic. This way, when your post on their sites appears in search engine results and your link is present, you get some search engine recognition. Although blogs have their different guest posting requirements, you still need to know the general guidelines for guest blogging (http://www.youngprepro.com/guest-blogging-guide/) before trying it out.

5. Have a Site Map and Internally Link Your Pages

Avoid making a complex navigation structure for your website. Keeping it simple will make it easy for customers to click through to other pages and for search engine spiders to crawl them. Also, you need a site map. This page usually has links to all the other pages on your website and it is advisable to submit this page to search engines. This way, the spiders can crawl your sitemap page and every page it is linked to.

If you are serious about your website, SEO is like an exam you must pass. By doing your homework on keyword research and optimizing your content, finishing with an A should be piece of cake.

This guest post is written by Sam, and he helps people find the best website builder online.