Saturday 14 November 2009

Search Engine Optimization: What's The Big Deal?

By Chris Johnson

If you want to your new web-based business to be successful, future clients simply have to know that you exist. While there are some traditional methods that work, like advertising, search engine optimization (or SEO) will be one of the most important factors in getting your message out there. More than eighty percent of Internet users use search engines to find websites, so you definitely can't leave them out of your plans for success.

What is search engine optimization? SEO is basically convincing search engines that your site is what users want to see when looking for your product. Let's say you're trying to sell used vacuums. When someone goes to a search engine to find used vacuums to buy, you want to be the first site they look at. It may help to find a professional to do it for you, but there are some simple things you can do to get your website higher on these searches.

First consideration: You have to have a SUPER website! No web business can survive without one, so why lead people to your site if there's nothing to it? If you have a good site then it will be much easier to naturally get search engines to rank you high in searches.

The second thing you should do is find out what people will be typing into search engines when they are looking for your service. Just look at what your website is about and try to guess what this might be. If you are selling used vacuums, you might assume people looking for that product will type, "used vacuums" into their search engine. Words and phrases like "used vacuums" that you try to feature on your website are usually called "keywords."

Even if you think that the keywords for your website are obvious, you should do some research as well. There are tools on the internet that can help-some free, some not. Once you discover what keywords people are actually looking for, you can begin actually try to integrating them into your website.

Third consideration: optimize the HTML of your website. The titles, headers, and meta tags you use in your website can be the biggest influence on searches. If your most important keyword isn't even in the title of your homepage-you have a big problem. Change the title or subtitle right away! Also make sure that your meta tags tell the search engines which keywords you want them to focus on (not all engines use these, however). If you don't know how to change your title or meta tags, look for HTML references online.

Lastly, make sure that the text on your site reflects the keywords you want to rate high with on search engines. See that keywords are mentioned fairly frequently in your site's text. If you followed the first step, your site should have a lot of good content that fits your market. If you ensure that your content is rich with references to your keywords, then search engines will naturally think your site will be important to people searching with those words.

If you're going to try and optimize your own site, these steps will be a good launching board. A few small changes might make your site more prominent compared to competing businesses.

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