Web masters often quote a study that says that “93 percent of Web users don’t look beyond the first page of search results” when justifying their use of SEO. And they’re absolutely correct. That said, many web masters don’t know how to properly go about optimizing their website for search engines. I’ve detailed below secrets that only the best of the best at SEO know.
1. Make sure the keywords you’re using are appropriate.
One mistake often by made by people trying to utilize SEO is that they make use of the wrong keywords. More often than not, the keywords companies use to describe their products are different from the ones consumers use. For example, you might be promoting “portable computers” but your customer may describe it as a “laptop”. With the wrong keywords, you could be wasting your time with your SEO efforts.
Thankfully, there are tools you can use to gauge whether your keywords will be effective. With the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, you can evaluate which are the most frequently searched keywords and see how competitive a keyword is. With this tool, you might even find keywords you haven’t even heard of.
Lastly, you should take into account the value of your keywords. This can be checked by using something called a Keyword Effectiveness Index. This can be a costly endeavour but if you have the money to spend, you can check the index on Wordtracker and SEO Sniper.
2. Take care when choosing where to place your keywords.
A common mistake from inexperienced webmasters trying to implement SEO techniques is that they place keywords in the wrong places. If keywords are placed too often in certain areas, it can cause search engines to ignore your website entirely.
You should take in consideration the following rules when using and placing keywords on your website.
– Make sure that you’ve utilized keywords in your page’s HTML title tag. Search engines pay extra attention to this part of the page to see whether a given page is relevant to the topic being searched.
– Incorporate keywords inside the body text. This is a good idea as long as you ensure that the keywords fit well with the rest of the text. This means ensuring that the keywords are used as if they were part of the paragraph originally.
– Do not make a page full of keywords that redirects to another page. This is commonly done by SEO novices and can get your page banned from a search engine’s index. In fact, most notably, BMW of Germany got itself kicked out of Google’s Index back in 2006 for doing the exact same thing.
3. Try to gain more external links to your site from other websites.
One of the best ways to boost your search engine rankings and strike SEO gold is by having your site linked to on another site. If the site that’s mentioning you uses keywords as well, that’s even better! To gain more external links, there are a number of steps you can take.
– Ensure that your pages have newsworthy or notable content. Once you have made sure of that, spread it around social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Twitter. This will help boost your page ranking as it lends your site more credibility.
– Tell influential journalists and bloggers in the media about your work. If you’re lucky and they agree, you’ll have an easy way to boost your chances of being noticed.
– Link to other sites as well. Webmasters may pay the favour back by linking to your site.
Conclusion:
As long as you follow the aforementioned tips, you should become an SEO master in no time at all. SEO may require patience and perseverance but once you have accomplished your goal, it can feel incredibly rewarding!