Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is more important than ever now that the number of websites and pages grows exponentially every year. In order for you to get noticed you must optimize your website so you appear higher up in the search engine results, hence the name. To optimize your site you must have two key elements…

META Information

META info is considered to be the best way to increase your rank in search engines. The META elements include title, description, keywords/tags, and endless more fields. The META code contains no end tag and belongs in the “head” tags of your page. For this system to work, you must customize the info for each page. You can actually lower your rank if you use repeat keywords and descriptions. The most important fields are “Title” and “Description”. The “Title” field is self explanatory and the description should be short and to the point, with only 2-3 sentences. The “keywords” element is not as important because most search engines look at keywords within the content of you page. The very popular Google Search Engine doesn’t even use the “Keyword” field. However, you should still be sure to fill in it accurately, just in case. Don’t try to trick the search engines by adding repeat keywords or popular tags and descriptions unless it directly applies to your content. Doing so could get you removed from the search results and will attract visitors who are not interested in your site (they’re interested in whatever tags you’ve posted).

Keywords

As previously mentioned; keywords within the content are much more important than the META info in the “head” elements. They should be incorporated in the text as words.

For Example:

Let’s say that you have a page about a diet soda review (bad example, we know). Your title would be something like “Review of New Calorie Free Soda”, your description would about its safety, and your keywords within the article would be repeated and something like “Aspartame, Phosphoric Acid, Potassium Benzoate, diet soda, soda dangers,and some other intimidating/ engaging words that you would want in the results of a search.

Tools

There are plenty of free tools to look up popular keywords and analytics programs to see what does and doesn’t work. Hopefully you’ll find out that analytic programs / server analyzer programs will prove to be invaluable. Google offers an arsenal of free services like Google webmaster tools (where you can submit sitemaps and more), and Google Analytics (which allows you to monitor your visitors and track things like bounce rates and more). One of the first things you should do once you’ve customized each page of your site, is submit it to popular search engines like Yahoo, Google, Bing, and more. Regardless of your opinion regarding each company, you should still submit your site (if you don’t, you WILL lose many potential visitors/customers/revenue).