ATTRACT, CONNECT AND BOOST YOUR SALES

Web Design, SEO Services & Internet Marketing
by Deon Designs

Search engine optimisation is a technique used to get your website ranked highly in the search engines and drive traffic to your website.

The first thing to consider before building a website is that it should be built with your customers in mind and not just the search engines.

If it is relevant for your customers then your website will do well in the search engines.

Here are the 10 tips in no particular order:

Content is King

Content is king on the internet and unless your website has well written content, it will perform poorly in the search engines.

Pick highly targeted keyword phrases (maximum of 5) and place them strategically in your title, meta tags and website pages.

Submit to directories and major search engines

Not as important as it was in the early days of search engines, but can be a good boost for a new website to build links.

Make a list of the major directories (DMOZ, Yahoo etc) and submit your site manually for free.

Sign up for Google webmaster tools

Google webmaster tools can help you identify problems with your website and help you troubleshoot any issues.

You can submit an XML sitemap to tell google about pages on your website, which they may not be able to access.

Create a Blog

As mentioned earlier, content is king and search engines will crawl your website more often if you have a blog which is updated regularly.

Blogs are easy to maintain, and can be updated from anywhere including your mobile phone.

Blogs are also helpful to your customer base because it helps them interact with your business and send you feedback through the Comments field.

Know your geographic market

Understanding your target market and where they are is vital to any business.

Knowledge of your geographic market is one of the most important factors of any SEO strategy. If you are only targeting US customers, then your website content should say so.

Use a sensible navigation

No amount of optimisation will help a website with a poor navigation. It will only drive customers away.

Your website has to built or constructed with your target audience in mind.

The elements of good navigation are:

• Make it easy to request additional information or contact you.
• Help them get to the parts they want to quickly (provide a sitemap)
• Tell people exactly what is available on your website.

Provide a sitemap to Google and Yahoo!

This will help the search engines crawl and index all the relevant pages of your website

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the first task to undertake in your search engine optimisation strategy. If your website is targeting the wrong keywords, you will not be found by your customers.

It involves finding keywords that are relevant to your business and which are popular with people searching for your products or services. Generic keywords are too competitive and you will not likely out perform more established website.

Submit Articles

There are many benefits to submitting articles to Ezines. The major benefits are:

• If your information is useful, people may hire you to write some articles for them or be a guest blogger
• A great way to get free advertising and exposure
• It also helps you gain more knowledge in your industry and write more topics.

Link building

Link popularity is the most important factor for ranking websites in search engines.

Getting quality links from reputable websites will boost your SEO strategy and help push your website to the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)