SEO Tips

When you are ready to start optimizing your own site, there are some SEO tips that can really help point you in the right direction. Although at first SEO techniques may seem to be very difficult, once you get used to it, it’s really not all that complicated. These tips will help you optimize your own site just like a pro and they’ll greatly increase your chances of getting a much higher ranking with search engines.

We’ll divide up these tips into categories to make it easier to implement on your own site. You can look at this list as a road map for your own needs and use it as you see fit.

The Technical Side

1. Meta Tags – For our first search engine optimization tip, we’re going to focus on meta tags. While they may not be as popular as they once were, they are still quite useful. If you are not familiar with meta tags, they are keywords that are hidden in the code of your page. Search engines can see and read them, but your visitors cannot. By choosing the right keywords for your meta tags, you can increase your ranking on search results and help a search engine index your site more appropriately.

Get together a list of ten to fifteen meta tags that accurately represent your site. Check them for popularity and weed out any that simply aren’t used a lot. Steer clear of adding popular keywords that have no bearing to your site. It may work at first, but you won’t be getting targeted visitors and that is the name of the game.

2. Page Titles – The title of each page on your site is vital to your SEO efforts. Each page will need to have a unique title that accurately describes the content contained in that page. It is a good idea to use your company or site name in the title as well. For example, you can use: My Company Name – Discount Athletic Shoes, if you are a shoe store.

The reason that page titles are so important is the fact that this is what will be displayed in the results section of a search. For example, let’s look at two possible page titles that would be displayed for the above mentioned shoe store.

My Company Name – Discount Athletic Shoes
&
Page2

If you were a search engine user looking for discount athletic shoes, which one would you be most likely to click? Put yourself in the shoes of your searchers and name your pages so that they describe what you have to offer. This will increase not only your ranking but it will deliver very targeted results.

3. Site Maps – Search engines need a site map to help index your site properly. This will tell them what content you have and how it is organized. The spider will also be able to find new content much more quickly when you are utilizing a site map. Since this needs to be written in XML for a spider to understand it, we recommend using a site map generator. There are numerous free tools for this purpose and Google also offers one. By using a site map you are making your site much more search engine friendly and increasing the chances of more frequent indexing.

4. Your Robots.txt file. This is a file that is not used as often as it should be. If you have duplicate content that you don’t want indexed, or you want to create a no follow rule for specific areas of your site, you need one of these files. If you are using a CMS, one should already be generated for you. If not, there are generators online that will walk you through each step of creating your file.

The Creative Side

1. Keyword Optimization – It took awhile, but we’re finally here. Keyword optimization is the single most effective tool for getting a better ranking. You’ll need to pick keywords that are popular, related to your content and effective. Avoid the practice of overusing or “stuffing” your keywords. Stick to a density of 3 to 4% per page on your top keywords for the best effect. By adding these words into your content, you’re telling the search engine what is listed there.

2. Selecting the Right URL – It is important to pick a URL for your site that uses keywords that are relevant to your content. If you already have a URL that is not optimized, don’t worry. You can always buy a second one and have it point to your existing URL. This is a very effective way of increasing your chances of being ranked in the top 30 results for any search engine.

3. Updating Your Content on a Regular Basis – This is a crucial SEO tip. The more content you add, the greater your chances are of being included in a search engine directory. The more often you publish it, the higher your chances are of getting a very good ranking. Search engine spiders are sent out on a regular basis, but they don’t index every single site on every single pass. They focus first on the sites that are already known to add content regularly on their first pass. By updating your site on a regular basis, you are literally training the spider to come by and index your content more frequently.

If you have a catalog site or your products really aren’t well suited to adding new content every day or every week, consider starting a blog to discuss your products and your company. This is something you can publish frequently.

These seven simple search engine optimization tips are the keys that you need to get a better ranking in any search engine. By combining all of them into one plan for your site, you can be assured that you will be indexed regularly, your content will be included and you’ll be ranked higher than sites that fail to implement these strategies.