The Ten important Steps for optimizing your website for search
engines by sandeep tyagi
The Ten important Steps for optimizing your website for search engines: In
these ten steps we will know ten basics and important steps to optimizing a
website to perform better on major search engines. If you will follow these
steps correctly your website search engine position website will be surly
improve depending on you industry competition.
Step 1 - Keyword Selection Step 2 - Creating optimized Content Step 3 - Site
Structure Step 4 - Internal Linking Step 5 - Submissions Step 6 - Link
Popularity Building Step 7 - Title and Meta tags Step 8 - Monitoring Step 9 -
social bookmarking Step 10 - Testing
Step 1 - Keyword Selection
Selecting Keyword is the single most important factor in the entire search
engine optimization (optimisation) process. Choosing the right and relevant
keywords will not only help you in getting good search engine position and
targeted traffic but it will also increase you return on investment (ROI).
Example: If you are a company based in UK providing search engine optimization
(optimisation) (SEO) services. The first keyword in your mind would be
definitely
Keyword Competition * SEO : 73,000,000 * Search engine optimization :
63,600,000 * Seo Company : 26,800,000
It is possible to get good ranking on these keywords but it will take lot of
time and money instead you can target ""Seo Company Uk" and "Search engine
optimization company Uk' this way you are targeting two keyword at a time with
less competition that means more chance of targeted traffic and good Search
engine positions. Keyword selection and research tools
The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool Site:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Word Tracker Site: http://www.wordtracker.com/
Step 2 - Creating optimized Content
There has been lot of changes in the search engine algorithms but there is no
change in the importance given to quality content. In this step we will focus
on how to create optimized and unique content for high search engine
positioning using the keywords we have selected in the first step. Unique and
well written content will both grab your visitor's attention and at the same
time, make them want what you have to offer. So write in keeping mind what your
audience are looking for and targeted keywords.
First ask yourself some questions:
* What services you offer * Do you provide the services your visitors are
looking for
Do some research Provide as much as possible information on the subject.
Provide useful and unique information about your industry / subject area it can
entice your visitors to visit your website in future. It has found that most of
the online visitors search for information about their interests. Content
Optimization
Four important factors for optimizing content 1. Heading Tags - (H1 to H6) 2.
Special Text - (bold etc.) 3. Inline Text Links - (Anchor text and alt tags for
images ) 4. Keyword Density - (number of occurrences of your targeted keywords
in a page)
Heading Tags By default text in these tags appear too large than standard text
in a browser. We can customize it by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Tip:
Do not use the same tag more then once on a page.
Special Text It can be used in bold, colored, ""In quotes"" or (in brackets).
Using special text will help draw the attention to important information and
also add weight to your keywords.
Inline Text Links Example: We provide seo services and web hosting. You add a
link to related page on your site to these bold words. it gives the reader a
way to find the information you are referring to.
Keyword Density Keyword density is the no. of occurrences of targeted keyword
in the content of the page. You should not spam the targeted keyword in your
content; recommended keyword density is between 4% to 10%.
Step 3 - Site Structure You must structure your website to attract the visitor
as well as the search engine spiders. The site structure will help spiders read
your site. Keep the code as clean as possible so search engine spider can get
to your content, where you want them to be. Use CSS to cut down code extra code
like for font style, tables, images etc...
Things to remember while planning site structure * Keep URL Short and close to
Root of the site * While creating folder and files use keyword Eg: for a page
in web hosting packs www.domainname.com/web-hosting/website-hosting.html * Use
Hyphens (-) while splitting name in to 2 instead of underscore (_) as shown in
above example.
Step 4 - Internal Linking Internal linking means linking to your pages within
the website by way of sitemap, navigation bar, footer, header etc. The sitemap
should be linked on all pages of your website to get spidered by search engines
from anywhere. You should also include Google sitemap on your site to get
indexed easily by Google. It adds relevancy to the linked page which directly
helps in getting high rank for the linked page Using text based links with
anchor text, footer navigation and use inline text link will improve Your
Internal Linking Structure. So spider can crawl it easily add relevancy to the
linked page. The closer a page is in clicks from your homepage. The higher the
value the page rank is assigned. Step 5 - Submissions
Where to submit: o Search engines o Web directories Major search engines to
submit Google.com | yahoo.com | Msn.com Major web directories to submit 1.
Yahoo (paid) 2. Dmoz.org (most important) http://www.about.com/
http://www.incrawler.com/
http://www.jayde.com/ 3. http://www.wowdirectory.com/
Step 6 - Link Popularity Building
There are 2 ways of building Link popularity o Reciprocal link building (2 way
link building) o Non-reciprocal link building (1 way link building)
Reciprocal link building
There are some basic rules to follow when exchanging links: * Relevancy is more
important * Check and make sure the reciprocal link aren't being blocked and
pages are indexed * Link pages with more than 50 links aren't worth exchanging
with
Non-reciprocal link building
It can be in form of paid link, directory listings, social bookmarking, article
publishing ,blogs and press releases Step 7 - Title and Meta tags
Once you have planned and completed the site structure and content integration.
Its turn for Title Meta and Description. Unique and optimized title and Meta
tags are really helpful in achieving higher search engine positions
Title: this tag represents information of page this can be in browsers header
bar
Meta keywords: This include the targeted keywords for that particular page
Meta description: The Meta description shows on the SERPS (search engine
results page). It is used in describing the products / services you offer to
your customers, you can describe specific pages within your website that shows
in the search results page. You can describe your pages the way you want them
to be seen by your visitors in the SERPS (search engine results pages) Next is
alt tags, Alt tags is a white hat SEO practice used very commonly by search
engine optimizers
An example of alt tag: <a href="http://www.domainname.com"
;><img src="/Images/widgets.jpg"" alt=" widgets in uk" width="461"
height="145" border="0"></a>
Step 8 - Monitoring
There are three basic things in the monitoring process. They are: Monitoring
your search engine positions: You can go through the searches manually, you can
use software like IBP to check your rankings or you can use online. There can
find many related Seo tools listed here
http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html
Monitoring Back Links
Schedule weekly checks of how many backlinks you have and are your link
partners still linking to you Monitoring Changes in the Search Environment The
last thing you will have to monitor is for changes with the search engines
themselves. Visiting forums and subscribing to newsletters to keep yourself
updated about search engines algorithm changes
Step 9 - social bookmarking
The social bookmarking is used by many people to bookmark their pages and
websites. Using the social bookmarking visitors can bookmark the sites listed
in the social networking websites. The popularity of the websites in the social
bookmarking world gauged by most favorites websites among the visitors. The
most bookmarked website obviously will get more traffic than others and it can
also help improving your search engine ranking in major search engines. How
does it work?
In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Webpage Urls, which they
find useful. Often, these lists are publicly accessible, and other people with
similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some
social bookmarking systems allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis. Most
bookmarking websites allows to enter multiple tags for your web pages in order
to be searched by the visitors that helps social bookmarking visitors to get
relevant and accurate search results for their keywords.
Advantages 1. Social bookmarking helps in promoting your website users market
your site. 2. It indirectly helps by building a brand. 3. Generates targeted
traffic. Some important social bookmarking sites Dig.com | Blink |Del.icio.us
|Digg |Furl |Google |Simpy |Spurl |Y! MyWeb Step 10 - Testing
You have created a great design and added SEO elements to your site. Now its
time to see if all that hard work done has achieved the main goal of reaching
the visitor and to convert them to a customer.
o Check for broken links : o Other script errors o Ease in navigating site o
visual appeal of the site o placement of content o are you able to find what u
are looking for
You have created a great design and added SEO elements to your site. Now you
should test your website for errors (i.e. 404 not found error, script errors
etc.). * Check for broken links : * Other script errors * Ease in navigating
site * Visual appeal of the site * Placement of content * Are your visitors
able to find what they are looking for?
About the Author
Inventa technologies is a London based Search engine optimization (SEO) company
specializing in Web promotion, E-mail marketing, affiliate management, PPC
account management, paid inclusion and trusted feeds, directory submission and
article distribution services. For more information please visit
Seo company UK
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