The adage, "If you build it they will come", is not true. Creating a website which attracts quality traffic is a demanding job. Advertising online and driving traffic to your website is not easy. Mastering website advertising requires keywords, hyperlinks, search engine friendly optimization, and an understanding of how the Internet views your information online. In the following days we will provide you a 5 part series to understanding methods, strategies, tools and techniques to increase your web presence. There will be a combination of paid and free techniques and regardless of the methods every single step we provide takes time to develop and implement. So...if you're ready...here we go.
1. Keyword Rich Title Pages. Write a descriptive title for each page — rich in keywords you want people to find you with — using 5 to 8 words. Remove as many “filler” words from the title (such as “the,” “and,” etc.) as possible, while still making it readable. Your page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Entice searchers to click on the title by making it a bit provocative. Plan to use some descriptive keywords and keyword phrases along with your business name on your home page. The words people are most likely to search, should appear first in the title (called “keyword prominence”). Remember, this title is your identity on the search engines. The more people see that interests them in the blue hyperlinked words on the search engine, the more likely they are to click on the link.
2. Valuable Description META Tags. Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title in the search results. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage, using the main keywords and key phrases on this page. Don’t include keywords that don’t appear on the webpage. The maximum number of characters should be about 255; the sweet spot, between 60 and 155 characters, are visible on Google, though more may be indexed. If you need help, Scrub the Web provides tools to help you create your META Tags. Prior to creating your webpage develop a keyword-rich article. The article helps develop your title. Then write a description of the content in your article in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and key phrases included in the article. This goes into the description META tag. Next, strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty keywords and phrases and insert those into the keywords META tag. It’s no longer used much for ranking, but leaving it in anyway still helps and provides value. Every webpage in your site should have a distinct title and META description tag. If you implement these two points, you’re well on your way to better search engine ranking.
3. Include Your Keywords in Headers (H1, H2, H3). Search engines consider keywords appearing in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags. Use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. (Note: Some designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags. That’s a big mistake. Make sure your designer defines these tags in the CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, rather than creating headline tags with other names.)
4. Position Your Keywords in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text.Search engines expect your first paragraph to contain the important document keywords which is the introduction to the content of the page. DO NOT artificially stuff keywords here! More is not better. Keyword density is important and should be natural. High keyword density does not lead to higher rankings, so don’t overdo it.
5. Include Descriptive Keywords in the ALT Attribute of Image Tags.This helps your site be more accessible to site-impaired visitors and gives additional clues to the search engines. The ALT attributes do help get your images rank higher for image search. An alt attribute specifies an alternate text for an image, if the image cannot be displayed. The alt attribute provides alternative information for an image if a user for some reason cannot view it (because of slow connection, an error in the src attribute, or if the user uses a screen reader). You’ll find more about this in our next article “Mastering Website Advertising (Part 2).”
6. Use Keywords in Hyperlinks. Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your webpage. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and key phrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or key phrase as another clue for the search engine.
6. Use Keywords in Hyperlinks. Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your webpage. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and key phrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or key phrase as another clue for the search engine.
7. Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly. You want search engine robots to find all the pages in your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus that appear when you hover are great for humans, but search engines don’t read JavaScript and Flash very well. Therefore, supplement JavaScript and Flash menus with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a search engine spider from your home page to every page in your site. Don’t set up your navigation system using HTML frames (an old, outdated approach); they can cause severe indexing problems. Some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly web pages, often recognizable by question marks in the URLs followed by long strings of numbers or letters. Overworked search engines sometimes have trouble parsing long URLs and may stop at the question mark, refusing to go farther. If you find the search engines aren’t indexing your interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting, a site map, or commercial solutions.
8. Create a Site Map. A site map page with links to all your pages can help search engines (and visitors) find all your pages, particularly if you have a larger site. You can use free tools, XML-Sitemaps.com to create XML sitemaps that are used by the major search engines to index your web pages accurately. Upload your sitemap to your website. Then submit your XML sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing (formerly MSN), following instructions on their sites.
9. Develop each Webpage Focused on your Targeted Keywords. SEO specialists no longer recommend using external doorway or gateway pages, since nearly duplicate web pages might get you penalized. Rather, develop several web pages on your site, each of which is focused on a target keyword or key phrase for which you would like a high ranking. Let’s say you sell cell phones. Write a separate webpage featuring the keyword “cell phones,” “cell phone,” “’your city’ cell phones,” “’your city’ cell phone,” “new cell phones,” used cell phones,” “cell phone cases,” etc. You’ll write a completely different article on each topic. You can’t fully optimize all the web pages in your site, but for each of these focused-content web pages, spend lots of time tweaking to improve its ranking, as described in Fine Tuning SEO.
10. Fine Tuning Search Engine Optimization. If you want people to find your site, you need to get it listed with search engines. SEO is the process of making your website more “friendly” for search engines, which helps them categorize it and display it in relevant search results. Optimizing your site can improve its organic search result ranking, making your business easier to find when potential customers search for products and services related to your business. You can try and do this on your own without help or you can reach out to providers like SEMrush or Wordstream but those can cost a pretty penny. If you want to be able to do it yourself for less than $2 a month you should trySearch Engine Visibility from iIntercept Media. What good is a terrific website if customers can't find it? Search Engine Visibility solves this problem by helping you add the right keywords and text to your site, then submits your site to Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and over 100 other popular search engines and directories. Use our expert suggestions to continuously move your website closer to the top of search results. Find out how "search engine-friendly" your website is. Search Engine Visibility works however you need it to. Our SEO tools analyze your website and help you identify search terms and keywords that can increase traffic on your website. Once you’ve placed the search terms and keywords in your website’s content, use our one-click site submission tool to submit your site to the world’s top search engines. For more detail, you can analyze and optimize your site with a wide variety of SEO tools, from our keyword generator to our site map creator.
Well…there you have it; the first part of a 5 part series on Mastering Website Advertising. There is a lot of information to be given and to process so let’s make sure you take this one step at a time. Please like, comment and share this article and thank you for allowing us to continue to grow. See you soon.
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