There are many simple and easy ways to boost your rankings in search engines so that more people will visit your website. Some search engine optimization (SEO) methods are out-dated and others are just plain shady (e.g. ‘black hat SEO’ tricks such as link farms).
We will discuss seven of the best organic”white-hat” methods of SEO: things you can do for free to achieve higher search rankings (rather than paid options such as pay-per-click advertising).
1) KEYWORDS
Choose and Use your keywords wisely! It is extremely important to research what keywords are best to use on your website. Google AdWords provides a very good keyword research tool that will show you the amount of competition for particular keywords and phrases. It is best to choose keywords that are searched frequently, while avoiding too much competition in your market. Most importantly, these keywords should be relevant, and correspond to your page content. Good keywords in the domain name, page titles, headings, and alt text are helpful, but should not be overused. Overuse can cause your site to be flagged as spam, so keep it relevant!
2) METADATA
Utilizing key tags in the <head> section of your web pages can greatly change how well a site ranks in search engines. It is important to always include a unique page title for every page of a site, with a unique page description (via a meta “description” tag, which summarizes the page content). The description metadata is very important for search rankings, and should utilize keywords wisely (for that specific page) while never being identical on any two pages.
3) SITE STRUCTURE & TECHNOLOGY
Some of the most popular sites have innovative technology, which requires advanced programmers. If your site has web apps that offer software type functionality in a website, then you have an obvious advantage. However, simple SEO techniques such as utilizing Google Webmaster Tools can do wonders to raise your SEO score. Many free tools are available to generate XML sitemaps (an index of your website, in XML format) which you can submit to search engines to help direct their crawling of your website.
4) INTERNAL LINKS
Websites indirectly tell search engines which pages are most important for visitors (and for which keywords) by having more internal links to those pages on their site (links within a site to other pages on the site). Placing the keywords of the target page in the link that points to that page will also help. You may make use of the “nofollow” tag on links that are not important for SEO purposes (such as the legal disclaimer) to help search engines direct visitors to other more important pages.
5) EXTERNAL LINKS
One of the largest factors in SEO is to have quality links from related websites (with similar keywords) pointing at your site. For example, if Facebook were to post a link to your site on their homepage, then you would see a huge spike in visitors. Having quality links from high-ranking sites will boost your site towards the top of search engine results. Probably the best method to earn quality links is to offer quality content that people truly want. Posting content on the social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) can boost visitors and inbound links as well. In addition, it is important to check and fix the site for any broken links on a regular basis.
6) CONTENT
As stated previously, the best way to attract visitors and quality inbound links is with good content that people want to consume. Updating page content on a regular basis tells search engines that they need to frequently visit your site for new stuff, and lets visitors know they can expect new content once in a while. Static pages that change once a year will not drive people to come back to your site frequently. However, integrating a blog with regular posts is an excellent way to drive visitors to your site to consume new content. Unique and original content that people like will attract visitors and inbound links, and get the attention of the search engines. Simple isn’t it? Have quality content, get quality results.
7) INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Studies show that computer users prefer video and other impressive multimedia. You-Tube and Hulu are popular sites with streaming video, and Internet users spend countless hours playing interactive games on Facebook. Many prefer watching a video tutorial than studying a book – and enjoy streaming a TV show with one commercial to regular TV shows with twelve. People tend to link to media fast, so use media to your advantage.
For more information and to grade your own website for free, check out the SEO grader and free usability report on our web design services page.
Written by: Travis Larsen and Matthew Sharritt
Posted by: Situated Research
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Very Nice Article.i have read all points.
Thanks,
We posted this article on our LinkedIn groups and had many people who claimed to be SEO experts write to us stating that the article is out dated. They also proceeded to tell us that inbound linking is not important for SEO. These people claim to be SEO experts because they have written books on the topic.
I hope, if anything, that our blog posts educate people to make educated decisions. Just because someone has written a book on a topic does not mean that they are experts within the field. Anyone can write a book if it is on a topic of interest with the public.
With that said I want to stress the points that we talked about above. These are proven points that if you follow will help you with SEO on your current website.
As a side note the above two ‘experts’ I was referring to have retracted their comments once I ran a report on their own website and we found that they had an SEO score of 22/100.
Bottom line do not get scammed by people who claim to be SEO experts. No one can guarantee your page ranking.
To learn more about this topic please contact us.
Thank you.
Thanks for those seo tips. I bookmark your tips and will impliment them on my sites this weekend
nice post
WoW….What a great article…
Thanks for sharing and would like to have more tips towards….
Nice SEO advice! We are currently going through our own SEO strategies for http://www.onlinesalsa.com, a global salsa dance portal, so this will come in handy. /Susanne
[...] Originally posted on Situated Research Improve Your Website Rankings, SEO Tips [...]
Nice SEO techniques and a true lessons for all the SEO aspirants. I have already bookmarked your blog and referred it to all my co-workers.
I have been browsing on-line more than 3 hours nowadays, but I never found any attention-grabbing article like yours. It is pretty worth enough for me. In my opinion, if all website owners and bloggers made excellent content as you probably did, the web will likely be a lot more useful than ever before.
Intriguing post. Some thing I will in fact use within my business. Just shows how rapid this internet marketing industry is transforming.
Hey this is a good looking site, is wordpress? Forgive me for the foolish question but if so, what theme is? Thanks!
It is a custom WordPress theme.