Why Use Search Engine Optimization?
Few successful businesses who get most of their clients from the Internet can survive unless people can find them in search engines. Why? Because more than eighty percent of users surfing the web utilize them to find their websites. If someone enters YOUR product or service into one of these engines, you want your website to pop up right near the top. Search engine optimization (or SEO) helps ensures this happens, so you have to think about it when designing the homepage for your web-based business.
What is search engine optimization? SEO is basically convincing search engines that your site is what users want to see when looking for your product. Let’s say you’re trying to sell used vacuums. When someone goes to a search engine to find used vacuums to buy, you want to be the first site they look at. It may help to find a professional to do it for you, but there are some simple things you can do to get your website higher on these searches.
The first thing you should do is make a usable, functional website! There is no point having a lot of traffic to your site unless there’s something for them to look at when they get there. Better websites are easier to optimize by SEO anyway.
The second thing you should do is find out what people will be typing into search engines when they are looking for your service. Just look at what your website is about and try to guess what this might be. If you are selling used vacuums, you might assume people looking for that product will type, “used vacuums” into their search engine. Words and phrases like “used vacuums” that you try to feature on your website are usually called “keywords.”
You can’t just figure it out on your own-no matter how smart you think you are. You will be much better off to do some research and find some statistics as to what keywords people are looking for every day. There are some free tools (and some not-for-free tools) that you can use online. Make a list of the keywords that will be the best focus for your SEO.
The third thing to do is fix the titles and tags on your website. If your most important keyword isn’t in your website’s title, this is a problem! Search engines go through your website looking for keywords, and if your title doesn’t have it in there, they won’t think it is very important to your site. You will also want to look at special HTML tags like meta tags. You can use these to directly specify which keywords you want engines to use; some search sites use these tags, some do not. If you don’t know how to change titles or tags, try to look for guides on HTML online. It can be done without too much effort.
Lastly, make sure that the text on your site reflects the keywords you want to rate high with on search engines. See that keywords are mentioned fairly frequently in your site’s text. If you followed the first step, your site should have a lot of good content that fits your market. If you ensure that your content is rich with references to your keywords, then search engines will naturally think your site will be important to people searching with those words.
If you’re going to try and optimize your own site, these steps will be a good launching board. A few small changes might make your site more prominent compared to competing businesses.
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