The search engines play a crucial role in sending traffic
to your website. In fact most of the websites depend on the
search engines for their staple dose of traffic although
these days it is advised that you should target other
websites, blogs, social networking websites, three article
directories, online directories, and online forums too.
In order to derive maximum traffic from various search
engines you need to make your website search engine
friendly and properly communicate to their algorithms what
key phrases and keywords are important to your website. Let
us quickly go through a few steps that can help you make
search engines fall in love with your website.
Write for the people and not just for the search engines:
Some people have this misconception that you need to
manipulate text in order to rank well on the search
engines; partially this is true but most often it is not.
The best way to fair well in the search engines is to write
and organise your content in such a manner that it is best
suited to human reading. The more human-friendly content
you have the more search engine friendly content you have.
The search engines want you to write relevant,
well-organised content so that they can present quality
results to their search engine users.
Research your keywords in the beginning You should be very
clear about what keywords you want traffic from the search
engines; focus on the wrong key words and all your effort
will go to waste. If you're not sure about what keywords to
focus upon them go head and hire a consultant but never
underestimate the importance of keyword-research. Don't
postpone the selection of your key words until the
completion of your website because during many stages you
will need to know what relevant keywords your website is
trying to target.
Organise paragraphs under headings and subheadings Headings
and subheadings quickly tell your human readers as well as
the search engine crawlers what your pages all about. The
headings and subheadings often represent the gist of
content so be careful what words you use when you formulate
your headings and subheadings; preferably use your keywords
and key phrases when writing them.
Emphasise your important words When you highlight or
emphasise your important words it conveys both to your
readers and the search engine crawlers that these words are
important to understand your message.
Give distinct titles to your web pages Just as your name is
important to your existence, the page titles are important
for your web pages. Never have a single title -- your
company name, for example -- for all your pages. Your page
title should a property represent your web page and in fact
use the central sentence of your web page as your page
title. Avoid creating esoteric and confusing titles
although they may seem attractive. Always use a title that
clearly defines the message of your web page. Preferably
use your keywords with creating your title but make sure
you don't unnecessarily stuff the title with all your
important keywords: this will end up spoiling the effect of
your title. Organise your keyword-distribution carefully
Although he shouldn't manipulate your content for the sake
of search engines you can arrange your keywords without
seeming spammy. For instance, use your main keywords a new
title, in your headings and subheadings, twice or thrice in
your first paragraph and then at least once in every
paragraph, highlight your keywords once or twice on your
web page, use your keywords as hyperlink text when you link
to other pages of your website and when you are organising
your thoughts using bullets then use your keywords did to.
Submit your link to niche directories There are online
directories available to all niche markets and some of
these online directories are highly trusted by the search
engines, that is, if your website appears in one of these
online directories than it automatically gets a higher
ranking in the search engines. There are many business and
consumer directories; very carefully select the most
appropriate category and then submit your website under
that category.
Publish a blog Not having some blogs is so passé; a
blog is such an effective marketing, branding, combination,
awareness and SEO tool that it is highly recommended that
you have a blog for your business. Highly targeted blogs
are quickly indexed by the search engines and whenever you
post your blog posts they get the text quicker than your
normal web pages. Also somehow the blog posts get ranked
higher than the normal pages for the same sort of content.
There are many other numerous benefits of publishing a blog
but here are just talking in terms of SEO.
Use bread crumb navigation Bread crumb navigation is a
system that you often come across on category-based
websites. Take for instance a directory listing: initially
ago on the homepage, then you click one of the categories,
then you click one of the sub-categories, then you click
one of the sub-sub-directories -- and so on -- until you
arrive at the desired page. On top of the page you will see
something like Main->Clothes->Shirts->Men->Large->Striped.
This type of navigation system allows you to click on a
parent directory and immediately move to another section of
the website. This is good for your SEO.
Search engine friendly URLs You get an SEO boost when your
URL contains some of your keywords. The search engines
don't appreciate dynamically generated URLs much; they
prefer URLs that make sense in the real language. For
instance, doublespark-seo.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation/
is always better than doublespark-seo.co.uk/page.php?p=34.
Manually it is easy to achieve but if you are using a
content management system that make sure that your content
management system generates search engine friendly URLs and
not dynamic URLs that require a parameter to access a page.
So these are a few things that you can do on your website
that will make the search engines fall in love with it.
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Gary Mattoc-03 is the CEO of Doublespark Limited a
Cambridgeshire based Web Design and SEO consultancy.
http://www.doublespark.co.uk
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