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(SEO) or in other words, Search Engine Optimization.
The objective here is to increase your website's traffic, and ultimately convert
that traffic into some kind of goal you have set for your website. The
goal you have set being met is also known as a conversion. Often that is a
sale of some kind. However, you might be trying to attract new members,
get donations, inform the public of an important issue, etc. In all cases
what is called a "conversion" is met when you achieve the goal you have
set for the website.
Optimizing your website is an objective that is met by ranking very high, (First
Page Results), in the results of searches for keywords in certain search
queries that you want your website to be listed in. More specifically
search engine optimization is making your website rank higher than it's
competitors in certain searches. This is often accomplished by re-working,
very often by re-writing the content of your website to be more relevant than
your competitors in certain search queries.
Search engine optimization is often thought to be an effort to rank top
choice for every single keyword or search term you have for your website.
That isn't the case. The effort here is to rank high in many keywords and
search terms. You can't always be at the top of the search result.
That would be an unrealistic goal at best. Being realistic, you can rank
high in many searches. Sometimes you will be number one, not always.
I am going to explain each area of website or web page optimization a little in
order to help you understand the basic concepts behind Search Engine Webpage
Optimization.
My first piece of advice actually has to do with the last step. I am
going to mention it first only because most people I have spoken with got this
wrong from the very start. The very last step in optimizing your website
is the submission of your website to search engines. The last thing you
want to do is get indexed as a page under construction. That doesn't help
your search placement any. In fact that hurts your website's positioning
or search engine rankings. A website under construction is of no use to
web surfers looking for information or to someone looking to buy something.
Therefore, a website under construction is of no use to search engines.
Search engines want to display results. The more accurate the search
engine's response is to a surfers query is, the more likely that surfer is to
use that search engine again in the future. For this reason a search
engine is not going to want to list a website that will waste someone's time.
The second step in optimizing your website is to pick out your domain
name. This is the first opportunity you will have to use a keyword and or
phrase for your website's subject matter or content. Often people will say
to me that they want the same domain name as the name of their business or
organization. This is of course very understandable and expected as well.
However, some website names have nothing to do with the subject matter they are
in. A good example of this are the number of business's that use a persons
first name or a phrase that brings about an image for them they relate to.
The problem with these types of business names is that they either carry no
relevance to the industry or website at all or the expected impression that people get is
not always the case. Impressions are personal and dependant on
personal experiences. You need something more sure to work. If
you have not already picked out your domain name, start here.
Like it not there are times when you know the domain name isn't very relevant
but for some reason like branding or Trademarks you have to use this name.
In those cases try to also purchase another domain name that is "Completely Free" and has relevance to your website's subject matter. Use that
domain name as well as the one you already have. You can create another
website altogether using this new domain name and connect to your existing
website or you can forward the domain name to the existing website you have up
now.
When looking for your domain name search the internet to see if the domain
name you want already exists. You can use any "Domain Name Registrar"
to find out if the domain name you want is available. Make sure you look
into the correct domain name extension for your business, organization and or
personal website. The domain name extension is dependant on the type of
website it is. Please see the section I have on Domain Name Extensions to get more clarity on this subject.
The next step in search engine positioning, placement or ranking advice that
I would give you is to build a "text" content rich website. This step is
probably the most missed and yet I think it is the most important step of all.
Many people put up a website that has little or no real subject content.
These websites are not helping anyone. That fact alone usually keeps that
type of website from being anything notable.
Often I see websites with a
lot of images but no text content. That is another common error. Yet
another common content error is to put up the exact same information available
on many other websites. If you don't add anything new or change things
around, put your personal touches into the content, you will be seen as
"repeated information" and not as an original resource. Why would a search
engine want to list a bunch of website with the same information on them?
How much would that help a web surfer with a search engine query?
The last initial step is to watch out for what type of content you have on your website. With today's web it is very easy to get a feed, blog,
column, etc, from somewhere else and display it on your website.
This type of content unless it stems from you is actually considered repetitive
content and not original content. While this by itself does not hurt you,
you still need original content. When writing the text for the website
keep content keywords in mind. See the explanation of content keywords
in the following sections below.
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The Nuts, Bolts & Screws Behind Web Page Optimization
There are many methods to optimizing your web pages. I will go
into each search engine optimizing method in more detail. There are
Meta Tags,
Content Keywords,
Search Terms, Phrases, and Expressions,
Combinations of keywords,
Page Titles,
Hyper-Links,
Link Text,
Link Titles,
Image Alternative Text,
Image Title Fields,
Long Tail
Traffic, and more... It is better to work on all of these areas and score well in
many searches because your website is well balanced within all of these areas. You don't want to do well in only one area. That is too limiting no matter
what it is your website is for or about. |