Slick Tips For Improving Your Search Engine Optimization
With proper planning and strategy, Search engine optimization can work wonders for your business online. This article gives you the some basic tips to be sure your website is found online and without getting you into trouble in with search engines that can cause you to be ‘blacklisted’.
Here’s a few of the basics you’ll need to have your website properly ‘optimized’ for your target prospects. These are easy to implement in most cases, cost little to no money, and can yield great results for most local businesses. Listen closely and take notes if necessary.
One of the first and easiest things you can do is work on your ‘On Page Optimization’. What that means is making sure you make little adjustments to your website to allow search engines like Google to be able to ‘read’ your website properly, so they can display your website to people who are searching for what you have offer.
An example of this would be a local plumber who has a website that has great information about common plumbing issues. It’s obvious that this plumbing company would want their work to be noticed by potential local customers who are having plumbing issues. So by making sure their website’s ‘On Page Optimization’ is easily readable by search engines, search engines know that when someone is searching for “plumbing repair” in the plumber’s local area, their website will be identified as relevant to that search query. That means there’s a good chance the potential customer will see this business’s information and contact them for help.
Some of the top things to consider with a website’s ‘On Page Optimization’ are the title tags, description tags, meta keywords, and the content on the website itself. Depending on what type of website you have, these things may be easier or a little more tricky to fix, but they are well worth it if you are serious about having any type of an online presence.
If you use WordPress as the platform for your website (which we recommend and use) it’s as easy as a few clicks here and a little typing there, to make this happen. If you have an HTML or PHP site it can be a little trickier to do this. For the sake of brevity let’s just discuss what to change and why rather than the technical aspects of How.
Title Tags– The title tag is pretty much your website’s ‘headline’ with search engines. It’s the first thing search engines notice and carries some weight in regards to telling search engines what your website is about. Take a look at this screen shot of where a Title Tag can be found:
Where it says “Broadcast Yourself”, that is the Title Tag for Youtube.com. Title tags are like the Headline of your website and should tell the search engines what the website is about. Make sure this title contains your target Keywords (more about this shortly) that you want your website to be ‘found’ by.
Meta Description Tag– This is actually not weighed as heavily as it used to or used as an authority by search engines like Google, but is more relevant to Yahoo! and Bing. This is a snippet about what the website is about and should also contain your target Keywords as well. Take a look at the screen shot of how your Description Tag is seen by prospective customers in Google in this screen shot below:
Now even though the Description Tag is not as heavily weighed by search engines, this is the first impression searchers see about your website. This is a good place to use a little ‘marketing finesse’ to encourage people to click on your website. Make sure whatever is there is relevant to what the person is searching for. More on that later too 
Meta Keywords Tag– This is the Keywords Tag that you have on your website which tells search engines what types of keywords define your website’s content. It’s sort of like a categorization tag, for a simple to understand reference. This tag can be seen next to the title tag, like in this example below:
This is a great place to have your target keywords, which I told you I’d explain more about. Well here’s what I mean by Target Keywords. When you are doing any kind of search engine optimization you need to know what potential customers are searching for so you’ll be able to craft the content and these tags we’re talking about to make your website more likely to appear at the top of search results.
There are tools to find out what terms people are searching for, but this is something you’ll probably want an experienced person in search engine optimization to do, because if you target the wrong keywords all your other efforts are not going to get you any results. The keywords are like the ‘foundation’ of the search engine optimization ‘house’ you are building. You’ll be creating content around these keywords, optimizing your website tags around these keywords, maybe using Pay Per Click ads focused on these keywords, etc.
Website Content– At this point in the article this is probably pretty apparent, but having properly optimized content on your website is also very important. To visit our plumber example from earlier, on their website they should be writing either articles/blog posts, have videos, pictures, navigation links, etc all related to plumbing. Having the content more specific to a locality will help a local business target searchers that are in their area instead of people in other parts of the country/world.
Having good content is not only important from a search engine perspective, but of course, for people who come to the site once they find it online. Businesses should try to engage their customers, but also focus on keeping their information and navigation VERY simply and easy. Having your phone # or a contact form in a prominent place is also important so you can convert more leads into customers.
By taking these tips into consideration you can truly make your web presence known in your industry and area. Although these tweaks and optimization tactics work very well in some markets this is NOT the whole picture when it comes to getting your site in a position to compete against other businesses that are targeting the same customers you are.
In markets where your competition isn’t doing any of this, this may be enough to get you on top, but if they decide to really work on their marketing or hire a professional Search Engine Optimization company (like us), it’s only a matter of time until they steal your thunder. That’s not a fact that many people like to hear, but it’s the truth. There are ways to prevent this from happening that we can discuss on a one on one basis so contact us either by phone or by filling in the form on the Contact Us page here.
We’d be glad to help you analyze your market place and develop a custom plan for not only getting you found online, but increasing your bottom line with more customers to your business. At the end of the day, that’s what really matters. More customers, more sales, higher profits! Contact us Today!
