Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the first step to getting traffic to your website. It will take some time for it to start bringing visitors in, but it is crucial to implement SEO early. The sooner you get your site optimized, the sooner it will start showing up in the search results.

The first step in search engine optimization is determining what keywords you want to target. This may sound simple at first, but it actually requires some careful research. If your keywords are too broad or targeted by lots of other websites, it will be difficult to get good search rankings with them. Targeting niche keywords will bring better results.

There are free online tools that you can use in your keyword research. One such tool is Overture’s keyword research tool. You simply input a general keyword, and it returns the number of times that keyword has been searched for in the past month. It also gives you the results for related keywords.

You can use this to make a list of keywords that are both popular and relevant.

Once you’ve made your list, you’ll need to find out how many other sites are ranking for those keywords. A quick Google search will give you that information. Just look for the total number of results in the upper right corner of the page. The best keywords are frequently searched for but have fewer results.

It’s fine to target several related keywords, but each one needs to have its own unique page if possible. This will make it easier to achieve high rankings, and it will create more pages to be indexed. Both are good for your search engine performance.

Now that you’ve decided on keywords, it’s time to get down to business and get them on your pages. Here are the places that keywords should be used:

• Content – All of that content you wrote can be a major asset to your search engine rankings, but only if it is properly optimized with your targeted keywords. They should be used in a natural manner, and their density should be between 3 and 5 percent.
It’s also important to use your keywords in headings throughout your content as much as possible.

• Title tags – Including your keywords in the title tags of your pages can have quite an impact on your search engine rankings. The title tag is the piece of code near the beginning of your document’s HTML that dictates what will be displayed in the title bar when the page is shown in a browser. It should be fairly brief, contain targeted keywords, and be descriptive of what is on the page.

• Alt tags – Alt tags are the HTML tags that contain the alternate text to be displayed in place of images if they do not load or if the user’s browser does not support them. Including alt tags that include your keywords and describe the images well can help raise your search engine positioning.

• Keyword and description tags – Once heavily relied on by the search engines, the keyword and description tags now carry little weight in rankings. Unscrupulous webmasters often stuffed them with keywords that were unrelated to the pages they were on, so most search engines have reduced their importance or stopped using them altogether. There are still some that use them, however, so they should be included. But there is no reason to spend a lot of time on them.

• Your URLs – Including keywords in your URLs can increase your search engine rankings. If possible, getting a domain name that includes your keywords will ensure that they will appear in the URL of every page on your site. It’s also very helpful to include targeted keywords in your individual file names. Separating each word with a hyphen is said to provide the best results.

You can do your own search engine optimization, or you can hire a professional to do it. The important thing is that it’s done, and that it includes your keywords in a way that search engines will find them and deem your pages relevant for them. Good natural search rankings are worth their weight in gold, so to speak, because they bring you quality traffic at virtually no cost. The only investment you make is your time, or the fee you pay to have your site optimized.

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