How to Optimize Your Website for Search Engine Use: 8 Steps

07/01/2015 00:26

 

 

Content still reigns as the king in the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Some websites get on top of search engine rankings because of high-powered link building campaigns, but when you talk about visitor loyalty and traffic retention (and yes, public consumption), it will always require that good old optimized content.

 

Dedicate some time to writing really great content. The saying goes that you should write for people first and search engines second. This basically means you should be creating really quality pieces that are useful and engaging for humans because the search engines will recognise your efforts. Your readers will share your work generating additional backlinks, not to mention extra traffic, and search engines will recognise your quality piece because it will flow naturally with not too many keywords (something which is penalized in the post Penguin Update world).

  • Write content people want to share on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social networks. The search engine will read those social signals as a signal of the quality of your domain. You can accelerate the spread of your content on these sites by having an account on these social networks with lots of followers.
Get links to your pages from other trusted websites.
  • Even if you are new to the web, you have natural links you could try to get. All businesses have suppliers whether they be accountants, solicitors or raw material providers. All these suppliers are bound to have a website, contact them to ask for a link back, but do not offer a link in exchange. Link exchanges don't violate Google's TOS, but they will now work against you. When building links, always give other site owners a reason to want to link back to you. Perhaps write an article based on a particular client - everyone likes bragging rights and this can gain you additional links without even having to ask. All Google wants to see is links that have an editorial right to be there.
Complete all image attributes. Pictures dress up your pages but search engines don't really know how to deal with them unless you complete all the nitty-gritty details like title, caption, alternate text, description. Be ethical though, don't use it as an opportunity to cram an extra few keywords onto the page as this will likely have a negative impact on your search engine ranking. 
 
Diversify internal anchor text links. There needs to be variations in the text when one creates those blue-highlighted anchor text links. The links on a page are what the search engine spiders follow in determining where they are being led. 
 
Take note of word count. Although it’s been a classic rule that “readers online do not read”, it simply doesn’t mean that one has to deprive the online users of good, meaty content. Stick to at least 250 words a page. SEOs know that writing down for an appropriate length of text means being more able to include more related terms for the target keywords.
 
Avoid duplicate content. The content on your website should be unique from other pages on your site, and from external sites as well. 
 
Title Tags
The first is your page title.
 It’s very important to put keywords in your page title; specifically try to get important keywords first and try to limit the overall length of your page title. Well-constructed title tags contain the main keyword for the page. It should contain less than 65 characters with no stop words such as: a, if, the, then, and, an, to, etc. 
 
Header Tags
Next, it’s important to look at the header tags on your site-h1, h2, h3, h4 and so on.
 H1 is the most significant. Make sure you have the most important keyword labeled as h1 tag.
 
 
 
 
About the Author:

My name is Lissa Anderson I am a full time SEO consultant. I've been doing freelancing,web development,web designing & internet marketing stuff for more than 8 years. Now I am affiliate with one of the world’s largest online advertising company. 
I´m offering SEO and SocialMedia Services here on my website too.