If you have a website, odds are you are wishing that it had better search engine placement. Well, there are things that you can do to build it up and make it more relevant in the eyes of search engines and visitors. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) holds the key to better search engine placement and ultimately, more quality traffic.
There are many ways to drive traffic to your site, but none have the ability to drive targeted traffic like search engines do. For that reason, a wise thing for any webmaster to do is get in and stay in the good graces of the major search engines. So, what are some of the things that a webmaster can do to optimize their site in the eyes of search engines.
Well, the search engine optimization process can be broken down into two categories, on-site and off-site SEO.
On-Site SEO
Onsite SEO consists of just that, the content and the arrangement of that content on you sites web pages. Fresh and original content is something that search engines love to read and serve to their clients. If you have a static site such as a business site in which the content rarely, if ever, changes, you would do well to add a blog to it. It is no secret that Google, Bing and others love blogs, provided that unique and informative content is added to it on a regular basis. Fresh content will keep the search engines visiting regularly as well as serving it up regularly in search queries.
Key Keywords
Another on-site factor that helps SEO is using the right keywords and putting them in the right places. The Google Keyword Selector Tool helps a webmaster and copywriter to do this. Find keywords relevant to your content that have a high “exact match” search count and low competing pages in the search results. This will ultimately help increase the organic rank of your web pages. Add the keywords to your title, meta tags and page copy. Keep in mind, however, that your copy should read naturally. Keywords should be added strategically, not stuffed obviously and to the point where the content suffers.
Link Structure
Your linking structure also affects your on-site SEO. URLs should appear static in your website’s linking structure. These days, dynamic URLs can and are read by search engines, but they usually do not contain keywords. If your Content Management System (CMS) contains a rewrite function that can rewrite your URLs in to static ones, definitely turn it on.
Off-Site SEO
Off-site SEO basically consists of incoming links. There are several ways a webmaster can build incoming links like guest post service, local citation links and more. The easiest way is to submit the root URL of the website to link directories. Link directories usually allow one-way, do-follow backlinks that count as votes of relevancy towards your website.
Guest Posting Backlinks
Guest post links are also a great way to build backlinks. A constant and fresh supply of unique and interesting articles submitted to top blogs is a powerful SEO technique on two fronts. First, these blogs allow resource links. Add resource links to your resource box that points to your website pages that you want to promote. Additionally, article directories make your articles available to other webmasters to post on their site, provided the resource box links stay intact. Quality articles can be picked up by many webmasters and can bring backlinks from many websites.
RSS ROI
Another off-site SEO technique is to submit your RSS feed to as many different places as you can. There are many directories that are RSS feed directories specifically. Like submitting to article directories, submitting RSS feeds is another form of syndication.
SEO Is Slow But It Will Grow
SEO, contrary to the belief of some still, is not a quick process. To gain high SERP rankings that are stable, time and effort are required. If you have a website, follow these basic SEO techniques for one year and you will definitely see a difference in both the quality and level of your search engine traffic.
