There are many simple ways to boost your rankings in search engines so that more people will visit your web site. Some search engine optimization (SEO) methods are out-dated and others are just plain shady.
We will discuss seven of the best organic “white-hat” methods of SEO: things you can do for free to achieve higher search rankings (rather than paid options such as pay-per-click advertising).
For those of you who don’t know “white hat” methods are nice, good, wholesome, fair and right ways of doing things and ate ones the Googles, Yahoos and the Bings of the world approve of. “Black Hat” methods are the bad, unfair, downright naughty way of doing things. Note to self: write a blog on White hat and Black hat ideas.
1) KEYWORDS: Choose and Use your keywords wisely! It is extremely important to research what keywords are best to use on your web site. Google Ad Words can provide a very good keyword research tool that will show you the amount of competition for particular keywords and phrases. It is best to choose keywords that are searched frequently, while at the same time avoiding so of the competition in your market nitch. These keywords should be relevant, and applicable to your page content. Good keywords in the domain name, page titles, headings, and alt text are helpful, but should not be overused. Overuse can cause your site to be flagged as spam, and get you booted out of the search engine!
2) METATAGS Utilizing key tags in the head section of your web pages can greatly change how well a site ranks in search engines. It is important to always include a different page title for every page of your site, with a unique page description with a meta tag description, which summarizes the page content. The description metadata is very important for search rankings, and should utilize the keywords for that specific page while never being identical on any of your other pages.
3) SITE STRUCTURE Some of the highly ranked sites have innovative technology, which requires advanced programmers. If your site has web apps that offer software type functionality in a web site, then you have an obvious advantage. However, simple SEO techniques such as utilizing Google Webmaster Tools can do wonders to raise your SEO score. Many free tools are available to generate XML sitemaps (an index of your web site, in XML format which you can submit to search engines to help direct their crawling of your site.
4) INTERNAL LINKS: Websites indirectly tell the search engines which pages are most important for visitors (and for which keywords) by having more internal links to those pages on their site (links within a site to other pages on the site). Placing the keywords of the target page in the link that points to that page will also help. You may make use of the “no follow” tag on links that are not important for SEO purposes (such as the legal disclaimer) to help search engines direct visitors to other more important pages.
5) EXTERNAL LINKS: One of the largest factors in SEO is to have quality links from related websites (with similar keywords) pointing at your site. For example, if Facebook were to post a link to your site on their homepage, then you would see a huge spike in visitors. Having quality links from high-ranking sites will boost your site towards the top of search engine results. Probably the best method to earn quality links is to offer quality content that people truly want. Posting content on the social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. can boost your visitors and inbound links. Just make sure you check and fix the site for any broken links on a regular basis.
6) CONTENT: As stated previously, the best way to attract visitors and quality inbound links is with good content that people want to consume. Updating page content on a regular basis tells search engines that they need to frequently visit your site for new stuff, and lets visitors know they can expect new content once in a while. Static pages that change once a year will not drive people to come back to your site frequently. However, integrating a blog with regular posts (http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Larsonssalesmarketingblog ) is an excellent way to drive visitors to your site to find new content. Unique and original content that people like will attract visitors and get you needed inbound links, as well as get the attention of the search engines. Simple isn’t it? Have quality content… get quality results. Dud.
7) INTERACTIVE MEDIA: Studies show that computer users prefer video and other impressive multimedia. You-Tube and Hulu are popular sites with streaming video, and Internet users spend hours playing interactive games on Facebook. Many prefer watching a video tutorial than studying a book – and enjoy streaming a TV show with one commercial to regular TV shows with twelve. People tend to link to media fast, so use media to your advantage.
Larson Notes & Satire: So how do you stack up? How many of the big 7 are you using? I would guess I’m a 5.5 on a 7 point scale. I am slowly seeing my site raise up in both the rankings, and popularity (hits). I view it as I work in process, Where my marketing plan and my business plan and my sales plan all start to come together to being in qualified leads to become customers, and isn’t that what it is all really about, turning leads into sales?
Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
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P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.
P.P.S. An American Company, marketing American Companies! Call or email to get an appointment to pick my brain (a $125.00 value) for 30 minutes.
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