Website Design Series
SEO
SEO, the common acronym for search engine optimization, has become a critical component in most successful internet marketing strategies. This article is about “organic” or “natural” seo – those web pages listed on the left side of a search engine results page (SERP). Generally, these “organic” listings command the most credibility for a website and get clicked on the most. Why is this? The rest of this article explains and provides some guidance on how to get listed high in the search engines.
When you do an internet search, the major search engines decide through their complex algorithms, which websites or web pages are among the most important on the internet for the phrase being searched. For example, if you did a Google search for seo Richmond, Google will tell you there are more than 800,000 relevant web pages. Therefore, for Google to consider your website to be among the top 10 (1st page) is a meaningful endorsement.
Ok, so how do you get on the first page on the left side? SEO is comprised of two major factors – relevant content that matches your search phrase and incoming links, commonly referred to as “link popularity. Get these two factors right and the major search engines will rank you highly.
Content relevance, or on-page factors, is important not only for seo but also for your total internet marketing program. To achieve good rankings for key phrases that relate to your business, you must create a theme for each page in your website. Once you have determined what key phrase to target, then you can “optimize” a web page around that theme. Make sure your key phrases are in the following html code for a particular web page
· Title tag, H1 header tag, H2 header tag and appropriate Alt tags
· In the headline on the web page
· Stated several times, but not too often, in the text on the page. Too little and the theme won’t be considered strong enough. Too many and the search engines might think you are “spamming” the phrase.
Link popularity, or off-page factors, includes how many other websites are linking to yours, the relevance of those links, and the importance of the website that is linking to yours. The search engines consider incoming links as “votes”. Also, a very important website that “votes” for your website is considered more important than just a normal website. Google considers their Page Rank as an indicator of the importance of your website. To determine Google’s Page Rank, you’ll need to download and install the Google toolbar onto your computer. This is easy and it’s free. Again, links are critical to seo.
So where do you go to get incoming links to your website? We recommend the following
· Companies that are supplying you with products or services
· Strategic partners in your industry
· Internet Directories of products/services in your industry
Remember that reciprocal links may not help. Here’s why…if your website has a Page Rank of 5 and you are exchanging links with a website that has a 2 Page Rank, you are not gaining anything and in fact may get penalized because you are essentially giving away 3 votes. This isn’t exactly how it works but gives you some understanding of seo. Also, having the targeted key phrase as the actual link text is far more valuable than a “click here” link.
As you think about your internet marketing activities ranking in the search engines will likely be an important part of that. Follow these on-page and off-page factors and soon you’ll be getting many more visitors to your website.
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