With a multitude of new websites coming online every day, it is essential that you keep your business’ page at the top of the search engine rankings. Knowing what search engines look for can take you from the bottom of the list to the number one spot. These guidelines for search engine optimization (SEO) are designed to do just that.
Learn to speak “Crawler”. Search engines use online bots, referred to as web crawlers, to document and navigate new sites to be used in their listings. Unlike human users, crawlers cannot see media elements such as images and videos, or other web applications such as Flash and Java. They rely on a combination of keywords, text, and anchors (hyperlinks) to piece a site together. Be certain descriptions and keywords are set for each of your site pages using the HTML Meta tag:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META name=”description” content=”Your online resource for customized business training” />
<META name=”keywords” content=”customized training, entrepreneurship, North Platte, McCook” />
</HEAD>
</HTML>
It is important not to overload your keywords –use a few unique keywords that are directly related to your company rather than using many that could come up in unrelated searches. It is also a good idea to sprinkle these keywords throughout your pages, especially in page headings and hyperlinks. Another way to help crawlers navigate your site is to create a text-only site map page that directly links to the different sections of your site.
Take advantage of back links. Back links are hyperlinks from an external site to one of your pages. The more back links crawlers see directed to your site, the more likely a search engine is to put your page higher in their rankings. While you can’t control whether or not other pages are willing to link to your site, there a few tricks you can use to increase your number of back links. Create a network of pages on various social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Use updates on your social media feeds to link users back to your site. Blogs and newsletters can also be a great way to increase your number of back links – links to specific blog posts can be included in social networking feeds as well. Be certain that back links do not all go to the same page. If a crawler only sees back links to your main page, it is less likely that it will index pages deeper in the site.
Content is king. The most important tool for gaining search engine rankings is content. Crawlers look for sites with dynamic content, and much of a site’s search engine ranking is based on when the site was last updated. Using blogs or other systems that can easily be updated will help your rankings, but it is important to weigh quality versus quantity. Crawlers will look for topics directly related to the keywords you set, and are built to recognize whether new updates appear to be automated or not. Using natural language and providing quality resources for your site users is absolutely key in gaining a crawler’s attention.