The first thing you need to remember about search engine optimization is that it is not an exact science—too many variables are involved. So you will see many different tips on how to do optimization from different experts. This article covers a few of the more common tips you’ll see when doing search engine optimization on a website.
Tip #1: Plan your website with search engine optimization in mind. Don’t rush to get your website up and forget about search engine optimization. First of all, you need to plan the keywords. The keywords are the most likely words a person would use to find your website. One free keyword analysis tool used is http://adwords.google.com. You basically type in the proposed keywords and it feeds you primary results along with similar keyword combinations that others used to search. It also provides a graphical chart showing the frequency of all the related keyword combinations used. These keywords are going to be used in the content of your website. Another free keyword analysis tool is found at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com. It is similar but does not give the graphical display and it is good for determining keyword tails.
Tip #2: Think about search keyword you may want to target. For example, go to http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com and type in the search phrase: web hosting. It should return quite a few results. For purposes of this article, not every result is listed here but only a subset. The search in Free Keywords might return:
4731 web hosting
1822 free web hosting
895 michigan web site hosting
80 web hosting forum
80 web hosting newport
80 web hosting oc
The first column is the number of searches and the second column is the search phrase. Note that the majority of search counts are located in the first three results. Top three keywords may be hard to go after. It may be a better strategy to go after several not as popular, specific keywords.
Tip #3: Create web pages that are search engine friendly. The search engine bots like the Googlebot will “read” your pages in order index and categorize them. The content in your web pages should always be standard ASCII text because that is what a machine can read as well as a human. Advances in Googlebot technology have given the bot the ability to read Microsoft Word documents and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) but these are not so good for simple presentation to a user. Another tip in this section that will help with search engine optimization is if you name your files, folders, and images that make up your site with filenames containing your targeted keywords.
Tip #4: Fill your website with relevant content. The best websites are those with content that keep people interested and wanting to come back. Write keyword-rich articles about different topics pertaining to the target audience of your website. If you are not skilled in writing, you can hire ghost writers from one of the freelance bidding websites for an affordable price.
Tip #5: Get those backlinks. Part of the criteria that Google uses for ranking the importance of your website is the number of related sites that link back to yours. You can get backlinks by doing link exchanges with others, posting your link in articles you post on other sites, asking to have your site linked, and many other ways.
Tags: Search Engine Optimization, tips
