The A-B-C of SEO… and more!
By Jason Shico – 8th March 2010.
As many people put it, content is king. And in this day and age of Web 2.0 where Internet is the reservoir of information, having valuable content is very crucial to your website’s success. But how would your website reach new and targeted readers if only a few gets to visit it? This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can definitely help you.
SEO is the process of optimizing your website in order to increase the traffic it receives from search engines when a pertinent search is carried out. It seems to be easily done but actually, it is a process that is very difficult to master. Below is a list of the most important SEO techniques that I have acquired over the years with my experience in the World Wide Web.
Meta title tags
Visible to search engines and your website’s visitors, meta title tags are the group of words which appear at the header of your webpage. If written perfectly, these can generate instant traffic to your website.
Example: <meta name="Title" content="DigiCloud Pty Ltd – www.DigiCloud.com.au – Cloud Computing, Web Development, Retail Point of Sale, IT Support Melbourne Australia”>
Meta keywords
Meta keywords are strings of words that describe the topic of a particular webpage. Make sure you find relevant keywords for each pages of your website.
Example: meta name=”keywords” content=”websites, website design, website hosting, it support, it technical support, cloud computing, software as a service, saas, retail point of sale, pos, point of sale”>
Meta description tags
These are composed of no more than 30 words and are displayed as the result snippet when a certain website is shown in search engines like Google. Meta description tags play an important role in page development and thus, they should be appropriate to the page’s content.
Example: meta name=”description” content=”DigiCloud Melbourne based IT Services”>
Title of website
When coming up for a title of your website, make sure that you put keywords in your site’s URL. It should also aptly describe your site so that it will be easily identified by search engines and associate it with your site’s content.
Example:
DigiCloud Pty Ltd – www.DigiCloud.com.au – Cloud Computing, Web Development, Retail Point Of Sale, IT Support, Melbourne Australia, Onsite Technical Support Australia Wide, SaaS, Software As A Service, POS Systems, Computer Hardware Supply / Repair
Footer links
Having products/services listed at the footer of your website is one way to maximize your SEO campaign. You can direct the visitors to the pages showing the products/services that you offer- thereby promoting them- using your main keywords (which they used to find your site) in the footer.
For example;
Cloud Services / Products
Web Services
Retail Point Of Sale Services
Help Desk Services
Google
Google is regarded as the number one search engine in the world. Most websites acquire their search engine traffic from searches in Google. The following is a list of their services that you can tap:
1. Google Webmaster Tools
With Google webmaster tools (www.google.com/webmasters/tools), you can understand how your website is indexed by Google, know the latest tools to better understand your website traffic details, and share information regarding your website.
2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics) provides you information regarding the visitors of your website.
3. Google Search Tools
By keying in your website’s name or your main keywords, Google Search Tools (www.googlekeywordtool.com) generate a list of new keyword ideas you can use.
4. Google Business Directory Advert Submit
Google continuously adds and updates new websites to their index every time they crawl the web and thus, submitting your website’s URL to Google is highly encouraged. (www.google.com/addurl/)
5. Google Adwords
A good complement to your SEO campaign, Google Adwords (www.adwords.google.com) allows your text ads to show up when a user performs a web search query using your desired keywords.
Sitemap
A site map serves as the directory of your web pages. It does not only help the visitors of your site to look for the pages of the content they are searching for but it is also used by search engines to know more about your site and follow your page links. Among the free sitemap tools you can use is www.xml-sitemaps.com.
Free business listing sites
Another option is to have your ad with your products/services submitted to free business listing sites such as www.livepages.com.au, www.yellowpages.com.au, www.mmv.vic.gov.au, www.hotfrog.com.au, www.melbourneexchange.com.au, and www.bigroo.com. Your potential customers can easily find your listing by looking in the business listing websites’ directories.
Social networking sites
Being an active member of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can help increase your online popularity and consequently, drive traffic to your site. Certainly, these sites can not only help you find your classmate 10 years ago; it can also help you interact with potential customers.
For example;
Facebook , Twitter , LinkedIn , WordPress
Free websites
One other technique is to create and setup a free website over at www.Webs.com and www.weebly.com . Copy the contents of one to two pages of your website and paste it in the front page of your Webs website. Do not forget to also put links of your original website’s URL in various parts of the pages of your Webs website.
Press release
Press releases can be used as an efficient technique to get links from other websites, especially when you are able to develop a good relationship with the media. Moreover, when you submit your PRs online, you get to improve your online visibility, more importantly, in news search sites.
Links, links, links
By finding websites related to your site’s niche and exchanging links with them effectively, you can see a jump in hits to your website. Make sure you do not include broken links into your site.
A good SEO campaign cannot be learned and executed overnight. Knowing how to effectively employ this marketing strategy is indeed a tedious yet rewarding process that can make your online business stand out and succeed.
