With so many more people turning to online businesses, the key to making your business successful by getting traffic is to rank on the first page of the search engines. Some will try to do this with Pay-per-click, if they can afford it. Unfortunately, with the sheer amount of competition to rank on the first page in Adwords, you could pay up to $20 per click. Most small businesses simply cannot afford this. Therefore, this is a very good reason to get your website on the first page of the natural search, or free search. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is “
Technology is always changing and google is known as a moving target. Whereas yesterday, a certain tactic worked to get you on the first page of google, today, there may be an entirely new system to follow. Businesses need to evolve in order to rank on the first page and get traffic to their sites.
So what exactly should a business do to get a higher SEO ranking? Here are some of the suggestions given by several sources in this industry:
1.) Use Cascade Styling pages or CSS pages. CSS Pages are promoted because they allow your page to load faster. According to Stone Temple Consulting, CSS pages are important to SEO for the following reasons:
a. Moving important content — especially the unique text that you want the page to rank for, along with any related links — to the top of the HTML file. This is probably the single most important reason for using CSS from an SEO perspective, and can have a significant impact on rankings.
b. Making pages “lighter” in weight, and decreasing the code-to-content ratio. Done properly, this can make your entire site easier and more efficient to crawl, leading to more and better indexing of your site’s content.
c. Using standard HTML tags, such as <h1>, which search engines recognize as indicators of important content, instead of fancy <font> tags
d. Using standard HTML tags, such as <ul> and <a> to construct menus that contain standard HTML links to other important areas of your site. This makes these links easily discoverable by search engines, helping ensure more efficient and deeper crawling of your site. “
2.) Optimization of your content. Many large companies have pages of content which are not organized as well as they could be, and therefore difficult to find in the search engines. Accoding to Lee Odden who writes in his article Digital-Asset-Optimization, the importance of optimization is extremely important in order for customers to find what they are looking for easily. He states,” The task of optimizing any electronic files that can be crawled, indexed, categorized and sorted is where the opportunity lies. This is more than just optimizing social media, it’s a more holistic perspective on helping content become easier to find via search than simply relying on text documents. Most organizations produce an array of different content types and search engines are doing their best to index that content so they can run ads next to it. Optimizing holistically starts with an inventory of a company’s digital assets. Text, images, audio and video are all considered along with the incorporation of keyword messaging across company communications. Matching digital assets with channels of distribution provides marketers with even more opportunity to reach customers since each channel can drive traffic independently as well as improve standard search visibility.”
3.) Do keyword research to optimize your target audience, determine your competition and rank higher. Once you determine the best keywords, you will want to use them in the title and ideally they should be in the incoming links directed toward your page. Some people may think that broad keywords are ideal, but this is not the case if you are trying to sell something or have a higher ranking. For example, if you are selling wagons, you will not get on the first page of google using the keyword wagons, because the competition is much larger than using a more specific keyword. Instead find relevant longer tailed keywords which better define your product. This will narrow down the competition and bring more qualified, ready to buy consumers. You may narrow your target audience with a longer tailed keyword like Red Radio flyer wagon. Doing keyword research is not hard as hard as you may think, but I will have more about that in a different post.
4.) Get as many links to your site as possible through blogging, article writing, video content and social forums. Unlike the old way of manual linking or buying links, SEO 2.0 revolves around you providing quality content and others picking up on that and using your links in their webpages. The best kind of links are from sites such as .edu or .gov, as google weights these sites with more importance.
5.) Write Fresh Content on your webpage. It is recommended that after building your page, you don’t just leave it. Your customers are coming to the internet looking for information. They want fresh content and the more the better. If you are selling products, make sure to have the manufacturer’s white pages. Your webpage will rank higher with updated, fresh content, and your visitors will come back.
6.) Add a blog to your website. People love to read content and they want to be able to interact with each other. Make sure your blog has quality content and is updated often. You should also make sure to answer or comment about any questions your readers have.
If you have a new website, it could take as long as 4-5 months before it gets indexed. You will not want to wait that long to get traffic to your site. This is where social forums are great. If you have a blog on wordpress or build a lens on squidoo, you can place a link within your blog or lens. Writing great content, using targeted keywords and getting links to your site on a well established social media site, could get you ranked number one in the organic search engines. When people click on that site, your link will be included within your article and your reader will click through to your webpage, if you have given them a compelling reason to do so.
Technology is constantly changing and the complex, rather secret rules of SEO ranking continue to evolve. Thankfully, with the increased demand for information and the new help-based networking attitude of current SEO 2.0 business owners, information on how your business needs to change and adapt will be readily available.
Are you looking for tools to help you optimize your webpages in order to rank higher? I found a great site which gives lists of tools, some are free others are not – http://www.webpositionexpert.com/ I hope this helps!
SEO 2.0 is really just the evolution of SEO. In the past, SEO was based on keywords and was somewhat complex, sometimes requiring a hired expert to help you rank higher in the natural search engines. SEO ranking was every man for himself, but today SEO 2.0 has evolved. This new way of ranking at the top of the search engines no longer is based on stuffing keywords in your web page, manually submitting links, and one way communication. SEO 2.0 thrives on awesome titles, excellent content and social interaction through sites like Digg, Squidoo, WordPress, Facebook and Twitter, just to name a few. Websites rank higher not only by tags and keywords, but content and links. These links are not bought or manually submitted, but freely exchanged in forums, article content, blogs and videos, just to name a few. People are sharing great content and relevent information and other people use this information and share their link.
