Search Engine Optimization: A few Strategies
SEO Tips
[intlink id="local-search-for-small-business-owners" type="post"]Search Engine Optimization[/intlink] ~ People want to get their sites listed on the first page of Google – organic ranking for their main keywords. I often get asked how to keep or get a site on the first page of a search engine. Here are a few tips or strategies for On-Site Optimization:
- Use your keywords in the title of your page or post
- Have the keyword repeat in the first paragraph
- Use your keyword in links
- Include an image with your keywords in the Title and alt text
- Have other posts that support the main keywords
- BLOG
- Focus your content
Search Engine Optimization also includes Off-Site Optimization:
- Creating links coming into your site ~ Local Directory Listings
- Creating links coming into your site ~ Posting articles
- Creating links coming into your site ~ Squidoo and HubPages
- Creating incoming links ~ Get more Reviews
I hope you can see that it is all about gaining more incoming links. Anything and everything that you can do to get a one-way link coming into your site will help your overall SEO ranking efforts.
Website Optimization
Are You Getting Business From Your Website?
Many business owners already have websites. However many businesses still cannot be found on the Internet by their potential customers. There are many reasons for this – some of them are:
- The Website is not optimized at all
- The Website is optimized for the wrong keywords
- There are technical problems with the web site
- The Website is built completely within a database that is hidden from the search engines
- The Web Site is many years old and has never been updated
Here is what one customer has to say:
“I have had my website for over 1 year, and I can’t find it in the search engines. It does not come up for any of my keywords, and it has not brought me any new business. After having worked with other web design companies and having extremely unpleasant experiences, it was such a relief to find Dotty and Premium Websites, LLC. She worked with me to determine what I wanted from my website and helped create a site that is functional, easy to navigate, and informative. Dotty has great intuition about what works with web design and how your company can best be presented. She provides reliable, prompt, quality service at affordable rates. After my new website was online a for less than 2 weeks I was ranked on the first page of Google for a few of my keywords. My new website has also brought me new clients. I will definitely use Premium Websites, LLC in the future for all of my web design needs.”
Another problem with many websites is they simply do not work. They are either out-dated, the forms are broken, pages do to link correctly, and many more annoyances can be found in websites. If a website does not attract and keep the attention of your potential client then it will not perform well for your business.
Dotty will provide a free consultation of your website and give you an idea of what needs to be done to correct the problems. Sometimes your site might just need a little tweaking behind the scenes, or it might need better content, a better layout, or sometimes the old site needs to be scrapped and a new one put up in its place. Dotty can give you an estimate of what it will take to get your website ranking well in the search engines.
Website Optimization (SEO) Package
On-site optimization includes:
- Optimizing up to 10 pages
- Optimizing all title and alt tags or adding them if they are not used
- Adding appropriate images with alt and title tags
- Adding meta keywords and descriptions or optimizing what is there
- Adding keywords through out the text
- Adding Headers and Sub Headers if needed
- Including keywords in the Navigation
- Bolding keyword phrases through out the text
This package only includes work on the site directly – it does not include anything done off-site like link building.
Website Optimization Package ~ $375.00
“The work that Dotty has done on our healthonline.us website has resulted in higher ranking by the search engines and more viewing by the public – exactly what we wanted. Thanks Dotty!”
Dr. Mark Blessley
Good Health Naturally
Monthly Optimization (SEO) Package
Websites need attention on an ongoing basis. Our monthly optimization package contains 2 hours of work with your site per month. The work can be any of the following:
- New content added to existing pages
- Site submission to Online Directories
- Link Building campaigns
- Social Media link building
- Optimizing your Social Media sites
This package includes all items that can be done online to build your websites Search Engine Ranking. It does not include adding new pages or features to your existing website.
Monthly Optimization Package ~ $200.00
Your Credit Card will be charged each month on your subscription day.
Vancouver Website Design
Website Design and Development
- Need more Sales?
- Need more Traffic?
- Need your Phone to Ring?
Premium Websites, LLC creates websites that meet your needs. We look at your business model, target market, and existing marketing plan. Then we create an optimized website for your business that ties your whole marketing plan together. You will work directly with the web designer with the experience, knowledge, and professionalism to capture your ideas and bring them to life on the Internet. By having a plan before starting your web project the result will be:
- More Clients
- More Sales
- More Traffic
Web Design Services
Your company website is often the first impression with a potential new client. Your website needs to capture the core values of your business and convey that to your clients. It is a first step in building a quality relationship that is crucial for building your business. Premium Websites, LLC is a local web design company that provides complete website solutions for your business. We offer:
- Flexible Website Design Packages
- Keyword Research
- Internet Marketing Strategies
- SEO or Search Engine Optimization
- Video Marketing
- Website and Internet Marketing Training for DIY business owners
WARNING: Web sites designed by Premium Websites, LLC may result in more business than you can handle.
Call (360) 607-4767 or email Dotty to get started.
Local Business Profit from Local Search
Why do I want to Advertise on the Internet?
I often get business owners asking, “Why should I have my business on the Internet?” There are many reasons but the most important reason is your bottom line. Weigh the cost of Phone Book Advertising, Magazine, TV or Radio Advertising against the cost of having a website. The Return on Investment is mush higher with a website and Internet Advertising.
More and more people are turning to the Internet to find services instead of having bulky phone books. According to Internet World Stats 73% of all North American citizens use the Internet. ABC News conducted a survey of online users – 47% of Internet users make purchases online. If 73% of your customers are using the Internet to get information and make purchasing decisions, and 47% are actually making purchases, then you need to be represented on the Internet.
Companies that do well with local search results are service based industries. With people moving into metro areas they need to find new service providers and are turning to the Internet to find and compare services that are available in their new location.
Two Types of Internet Advertising
The first type is paid advertising through a company like Google. Google’s paid advertising is called AdWords and is known as Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. The concept is simple – you define your best keywords (through keyword research) then bid on the keyword phrase. When someone types in your chosen keyword phrase then your website will come up in the listings for that customer to click on and go to your site. The cost of this type of advertising is industry specific meaning that is varies by industry. Keywords can sell for pennies or well over $50.00 per click. For business targeting the local market it is possible to take a costly keyword like “Web Design” and put a city or area behind it and get a much better price on the keyword.
The second type of Internet advertising is called Organic placement – these are the sites that are listed in the main area of the search results page. The goal is to get placed in the top half of the first page. There are many variables that come into play for the search engine to decide who gets prime placement. It is all based upon relevancy of the phrase typed in by the searcher to the websites listed. Some factors are:
- Keywords in the title of the website
- Keywords in header tags
- Keywords listed in the text of the page
- Keywords in the URL
- Keywords bolded or emphasized on the page
- The Keywords in the text of inbound links
- How many inbound links
- The PageRank of sites that are linking to your site
That is a short list of considerations made by the search algorithms – but all of those items are in control of the owner of the website. They should all be taken into consideration when optimizing your site for organic placement in the search engines. This is called SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
LinkedIn Profile: SEO Friendly?
You have spent a great deal of time getting your LinkedIn profile just perfect. It is finally at 100%. Is it helping you with Google? There are a few simple things that you can do to your profile that will make it found in Google better.
- Edit your LinkedIn personal url to have either your name in it or your business name
- When entering your Websites and Blogs use the “other” category. This will allow the title that shows in your profile to be customized. Use either your Website/Blog address or the Key Words you want to rank for in the Search Engines.
Take a few minutes right now and go to your LinkedIn profile and make these changes. I dare you!
Here are a few other articles about LinkedIn that you might find interesting.
Blogger Appreciation Day on LinkedIn – Put your blog down as a separate job on your LinkIn profile. I’m going to do that today. Blogger Appreciation Day April 14 Here are a couple of ideas on how to implement this with LinkedIn:. 1. Connect with the bloggers you know. …
Learning how to LinkIn and what it’s worth – Once you join, you post a profile (basically your résumé and information on any services you provide). Then you link to friends by inviting them to join (I don’t do that; feels too much like bothering people who already have too much to …
Here’s to your SEOing for your business
Dotty
20 SEO Tips
Here are 20 SEO tips as posted at Rustic Girls.
Search engine optimization can be confusing, especially for people who are new to the concept. However, there are a few simple things that anyone can do that will help increase a webpage’s chances of being ranked higher by search engines and increasing the number of visitors to your website. How much time you spend optimizing your website is up to you, but you should take a little bit of time to do some of the following techniques:
1. Have a site with well-written content. Optimization is worthless if your site is not full of good content.
2. Include a short site description in the title. Search engines will display between 66 to 130 characters of your title when they list search results. Each page title should be constructed so that it informs and attract users. For best results, include a title and a subtitle.
3. Create a site map and submit it to the major search engines such as Yahoo! and Google. You should also place a link to your site map on the index page of your site.
4. Make sure that each page of your site has at least 250 words of text on it.
5. Declare a “doctype” at the top of every page and a character-set type.
6. Keep your URLs as simple as possible. Try to use URLs that have keywords in them instead of numbers.
7. Decide upon several keywords and phrases and use them throughout the page. This includes putting them in the title, content, anchor tags, Meta tags, and links.
8. Avoid frames. Search engine spiders are unable to read them. If you feel that you must use frames, include important body text within a <no frames> tag.
9. Register with search engines and directories by hand.
10. Avoid listing words repeatedly. This is considered keyword “stuffing” and is more likely to decrease your search engine ranking than improve it.
11. Do not use “black hat techniques” to try and artificially increase your site’s ranking. It will only end up backfiring and will probably get you banned from the search engine.
12. Do not use flash or images in place of searchable text. Also, use the “alt tag” to describe any images on your site. This information is indexed by search engines.
13. Use headers that are relevant and contain key words. Not only do they help organize your text, but they are also weighed heavily by search engines.
14. Update your site frequently. Search engines like sites that are growing and offer new content.
15. Use a blog to extend your site and keep your content fresh. Your blog should be an extension of your website (“http://www.yourwebsite.com/blogname” and not “http://yourwebsite.bloghost.com”)
16. Place a robots.txt file on your server. This will instruct web robots which directories can or cannot be crawled by search engine spiders.
17. Avoid using doorway or splash pages. Doorway pages are designed specifically for search engines and are considered another black hat tactic. Most search engines are capable of recognizing them, which makes them pointless. Splash pages are intended to be entryways to your site and usually consist of some type of flash animation. Although they might look cool, they take a long time to load and contain no content for search engines to crawl.
18. Include the major Meta tags on all of your pages. While the “key words” tag is not as important as it used to be, it should still be included. The “description” tag is more important since it is what search engines list after the title in their results.
19. Validate your HTML so search engines can read it. You should also validate any CSS and JavaScript that you use.
20. Hand submit your site to the major search engines. This is a simple step but can go a long way in getting your site listed.
Now that you understand some of the basics of search engine optimization, you can decide if you want to go more in-depth and take the time to optimize your site further. You might also consider having your website optimized by a professional. Either way, you have at least minimized some of the things that can lower you website’s ranking, which could have cost you potential visitors.- Darcy Logan
Welcome to my Blog
Hello Everyone
I would like to welcome you to my blog. I will be updating this at least weekly if not more often. I will be addressing questions that customers have asked about repeatedly about how to get their sites listed in the search engines and anything else SEO related. I will also be posting interesting tidbits from the industry.
Dotty
Improving Google PageRank
In a nutshell the best and only way to improve the PageRank for your website is to get incoming links from websites that have a higher PageRank than your site. The PageRank is a mathematical computation that involves a ratio of incoming links and your PageRank vs their PageRank. So what are some ways to get links?
I am sure there are other suggestions. Feel free to leave your suggestion in the comments here!
Own the Day
Dotty