Search Engine Optimization or SEO refers to improving and enhancing your website in such a way that it ranks higher on popular Search Engines online. What most site owners don’t understand is that it is not a simple task that can be done overnight. No one can achieve results overnight. It is constant work to update your site and there is no one who can actually guarantee top results, though they may have techniques that work towards getting you on top of search engine results.
Most Site owners want to rank higher on Search Engines to gain more business and popularity, and thus fall prey to scams by the various SEO companies online. No one can guarantee top results on Search Engines unless they control the Search Engine Results. There are a few techniques that one can easily follow to achieve good search engine rankings, by making your site more usable and accessible for humans, and also attractive to Search Engine Robots. Using wrong and shady methods (called Black Hat Methods) can get your site penalized or even banned by Search Engines.
Some of the best Search Engine Optimization strategies include but are not limited to:
GOOD CONTENT
One of the most important things to do is write unique and simple content that relates to your business and site if you want to be found on the web. If you do not have good and unique content, even though your website is technically perfect for Search Engine Robots, you will not achieve good results. Good content is grammatically correct and based on facts about your business. Well written content will not only draw Search Engines but also get visitors who if like will link to your site giving you more inbound links that will further bring your site up on Search Engines.
Website Content needs to be fresh and updated to keep the search engines and visitors to come more often. Any new content added will be indexed quicker.
DESCRIPTIVE PAGE TITLES
Make your page titles simple while keeping them descriptive and relevant will help not only people coming to your site but also Search Engines to know what the page is about. The page title is what is used to link to your site from Search Engine results. The better and specific the title, the quicker your site gets attention from Search Engines. The best way is to write the ‘Document Title’, then ‘Section Name’ Followed by the ‘Company Name’. Don’t use the same title for all documents. Unique titles for all documents will give you more visibility in the Search Engines.
SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY URL
The best thing to do would be to get a URL based on the business category you are trying to target along with your company name. It helps with not only the ranking but the users. For Example, ABC HR Company can get a URL like ABChrmanagement.com that has the company name as well as the business category. Another example is tdinsurance.com, where the company name td comes up along with the category that is insurance.
GOOD LINKING
Incoming links to your website play a vital role for SEO and is also one of the difficult ones to implement. Getting any links will not make any difference, but getting related links to your business and the category it falls into helps bring your website up in Search Engines.
DON’T USE BLACK HAT SEO METHODS
Using Black Hat SEO methods like using link farms for linking (sites that are designed for linking only), Cloaking, Keyword stuffing (putting in Keywords everywhere unnecessarily) and other questionable methods will put your website at a risk of being penalized or even banned from Search Engines. Search Engines want their results to be accurate and do not appreciate being tricked.
SUBMIT TO SEARCH ENGINES
In time the Search Engines like Google will come across your website but once your website is completed, submitting a site to directories and search engines can be useful in listing.
GOOD META DESCRIPTION
Meta Description is writing good content with description about your products or services with keywords included as much as possible without being overdone. Some Search Engines use the content of meta description to describe your site in the Search Engine Results. Make sure the content is unique, simple and descriptive.
ARTICLES SUBMISSION
Article submissions gain you some popularity in the search engines which in turn helps your business website get better ranking. So submit good helpful articles that will eventually lead back to your business.
These are some of the stategies that will help with the SEO efforts for your website. Hoever, SEO is not limited to these mentioned above and there is a lot more one can do to improve the ranking on SEarch Engines and Directories.