How Can I Rank My Website Higher On Search Engines?
Search engine optimization is the practice of customizing a website and its links in order to help it rank higher in the search engines. Search engine optimization or SEO, is the most targeted form of advertising ever to come around.
It puts the advertiser in the driver's seat because the customers come to them rather than the other way around. But, SEO can be tricky. It is not something you can do in a few hours and hope to see results the next day. It takes a lot of time and effort to start seeing results. But, there are some basic things to understand about the practice.
First, search engine optimization is built around the practice of effective keywords and the research of them. The whole idea is to rank on certain keywords related to your business goals.
It does no good to rank on the term "red shoes" if you are selling cars, for example. Moreover, it does no good to rank on a term that no one is looking for in the search engines. So, you need to make sure this step is giving careful consideration, or you will be building a campaign on a foundation of sand.
The best thing to do is just to brainstorm anything you can think of that relates to your business or service. Come up with between 20 and 40 words and phrases that you think a consumer would type in a search engine. This keyword research is something you should be prepared to do whether you hire an SEO consultant or try to rank your site yourself.
That base of words can be plugged into tools that can expand the word choices using synonyms and related terms on a list of thousands. You can also get useful information like such as search volume and competition levels to help develop the campaign better.
The next thing to focus on is the on page SEO factors of your website. This element deals with the actual content on the website from the meta tags to the content the reader reads.
The spiders sell all the text on a page. But, using meta tags you can communicate to the spider what is most important by using certain meta tags. The actual content the visitor sees should be written for them to understand; not for the sake of the spider. If it is nonsensical in an attempt to stuff words, you will lose readers and rankings if it is detected.
The last factor to consider in SEO is the off page optimization. It primarily deals with external websites linking to the page. The search engines see these as votes for the web page and take them into consideration when ranking.
But, it is important to not be too aggressive when link building. If the search engine detects this, they will interpret as someone trying to manipulate search results and could ban the website from their results.
SEO is effective, but careful consideration should be placed on all three pillars of a successful campaign. Without one, the whole campaign will fail. It is very time consuming process and it would be another option to hire SEO firms to do all the work.