How To SEO

Want to know how to SEO? SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is as essential to your website as the images and content on every page. A successful website is one that is quickly found by search engines like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. To stand out in the search results, your website must be search engine friendly, well optimised, and the content refreshed constantly.

1. Research the search engine webmaster white pages. The major search engines publish white pages explaining website requirements for obtaining a good raking with their search engine. Each search engine has a different set of guidelines, and because of that, the goal is to optimise your site to satisfy the search engine providing the largest amount of traffic.

2. Eliminate the animation, heavy music files, and flash splash pages. A new visitor to your website has a three second attention span, giving you three seconds to grab their attention. Avoid overusing technology and be organized. Every page on your website should be one click away on any page. Create well organized simple text navigation and make it global on your website. Do not turn your viewers into a captive audience by forcing them to listen to a sales pitch or your favourite music file. It chases potential customers away.

3. Fill your content with keywords on every page. When a search term is typed into a search engine, it locates all the website containing that search term and lists them in results pages. In order for the search engine to find a website, it must contain keywords that match the search term. For example, your site sells plants and gardening supplies. Your content should be filled with keywords that list plants, hoses, lawn mowers, growing products, and gardening supplies listed by brand name. When the search term “lawn mowers” is typed into a search engine it will find your website. Whether your website is on page one or page twenty depends on how well your site is optimised.

4. Use the Meta tags to list your keywords and correctly describe your website.
   Meta tags are built into the HTML code of your website and are not visible on any page. When the search engine looks for website to satisfy the search results, they look at the Meta tags.  The most important Meta tags list the keywords and description relevant to your website. The keywords and description must correctly describe the content on your website. Here is an example of a Meta tag:
   <meta NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="flowers, flowering plants, lawn mowers, gardening supplies, pesticides, fertilizer">

5. Write a page title using keywords. When you open any web page the title appears in the upper left corner of the browser. The title of each web page should contain keywords. If no title is entered the title will read “Untitled”. Placing keywords in the title give your page more keywords for the search engines to find. Here is an example:
   <title>One Stop Gardening, lawn mowers, flowering plants, garden supplies</title>

6. Network with websites that have similar content through link exchanges. Search engines look favourably on website that are a part of a community through networking. Create link pages on your website to list links. Find website similar to your site, place a link to that site on your links pages, and write a short and pleasant email to the website announcing the link and requesting a link exchange. Create a special link on your website making it easy for other sites to contact you to request a link exchange. Do not agree to put a link exchange on your home page.

7. Refresh the content of your website. The most important part of SEO is to refresh your content daily or weekly. Add new sales or content often and give your viewers a reason to revisit. Fresh content will boost your ranking in the search engines.

Tips

• Things change quickly. Stay abreast of the changing requirements for each search engine and adjust your website accordingly.

Warnings

• Do not use black hat methods for SEO. Black hat methods are used to trick the search engines into giving better ranking which will result in your website being dropped from the search engines.

Resources:

SEO