Search engine optimization or SEO is an area that many small businesses find intimidating. As a business owner with a website, you probably receive unsolicited offers to improve your search engine rankings. While there is nothing wrong with using a reputable SEO professional to get your site ranked highly, there are many simple things that can be done up front to maximize your ranking without paying someone. This helps if you want to keep your costs low while testing an idea. If you have a user friendly HTML editor, it is often fairly simple to make some small changes that can have a substantial impact on your ranking and the corresponding traffic that your site receives.
The first step in optimizing your site for search engines is to choose the right domain name. Your domain should use relevant, descriptive words that instill consumer confidence. Ideally you should choose a short name with type-in traffic and no hyphens, although that is not always possible. The name should incorporate keywords that are relevant to your niche. Having a keyword that you are trying to rank highly for in searches in your actual domain name is an advantage over others trying to rank highly with that same keyword.
Another important step is to use keywords in the page header tag. Search engines look for a header on each page in your website and having a header that directly relates to your content is essential. Your page title should also be keyword rich so that the URL incorporates the keywords. In addition, make sure that your page incorporates the keyword or phrase that you are trying to rank highly for. Do not over use it, but strive for about 5 to 6 uses per page with 500 or 600 words of content on each page.
It is also helpful to monitor the traffic that your site is receiving so you know where you are getting your traffic. Is it more from search engines or referrals from other sites? Is there one search engine that is delivering most of your visitors? A good way to monitor traffic is to use Google's webmaster tools. By incorporating some script on each page of your site, you can gain insight into how visitors are navigating, which pages are the most popular and which keywords are working most effectively for you.
Finally, make sure that all of the pages in your site are linked together. This can be accomplished through menus, but the most effective means of linking your pages together for search engine optimization is through the use of a site map. Make sure to create one and keep it updated to reflect all of the pages in your site. Include a link to the site map in either the footer or header.
Incorporating these simple changes does not take too much time, but will help you test different ways of marketing your site without investing large sums of money. Using an HTML editor that incorporates SEO analysis will streamline this process and allow you to incorporate these changes at the same time that you write your content.
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