This seems like every website owners nemesis. If you have your own website, you want visitors to come an visit. However if you want to drive more traffic or more visitors to your site then search engine optimization is what you'll want to focus on. Search engine optimization draws natural traffic to any web-blog or internet site. There are many ways to help make your site SEO friendly but here are four starters.
1. Time: You should always keep in mind that it will take time and energy to achieve good results. No one can achieve higher ranking in search engines in a few minutes or few hours. Some people do this full time. If you think that spending 10 minutes a week on your website will get you the response you want, you will most likely be disappointed. If you can, set aside an hour a day to optimize your site. Can't spend an hour? Do what you can or consider hiring a website manager or media manager.
2. Keep the Content Fresh: If you design your website and then never update it, search engines will classify the content as "old." So what? Well, the people who program the search engines believe that searchers want content that is current and up to date. Older content will rank lower than content that is updated monthly, weekly or daily. Adding articles, blogs, specials etc will keep your website changing and current. Ideally, you want people to visit your site every day, right? So give them (and the search engines) something new to look at.
3. All Roads Should Lead to You: If you had a storefront on a one way street, your traffic would be limited by the people driving by going that one direction right? If you want more people walking or driving by, (ie: more exposure), you will need more roads leading to you. The same goes with your website. Yes, you have a domain name that leads to you but that's only as good as that one-way road. You need to get your business and domain out in other places that lead to you as well. Do you have affiliated businesses that would put a link to youron their site if you put a link to them on yours? Do it! Put your business on free social sites as well. Getting your business in multiple locations will create more exposure and links (roads) to your site which will help validate you for search engines and get you found.
4. Watch your Words: When people type a phrase in a search engine like "affordable website design" the search engine will look for websites and webpages that have those specific words in their content. Search engines are not free-thinking people, they're robots that index your site for words. A search engine will not recognize that "affordable website design" is the same as "cheap web developement." You have to pay attention to the words you use and put yourself in your "visitor's" shoes. You also can't expect to come up in high ranks just because you used some keywords once or twice, they need to appear frequently and appropriately. If I say a page is about "web design," words and phrases on that page should apply to that topic rather than phrases like "cheap cell phone service." Yes people might search for cheap cell phones but they aren't looking for your page on website design. If a search engine thinks you're being misleading or keyword stuffing then they could block your site altogether.
There is no easy perfect solution to search engine optimization for your website. These four tips can get you started. If you need help with optimizing your website there are website managers and social media managers who can help allieviate the burden.
Good Luck and let us know if you have questions/need help!
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