SEO Blog

When it comes to SEO (search engine optimization), it’s a race to the top. It’s a well known fact that most people won’t go past the third page of search engine results, so getting your website into one of those coveted top spots can mean a huge increase in traffic to your site. So how can you move your website higher on the list?

To begin, you should understand how NOT to move up, since there are many bad ways to optimize your site which will only get you into trouble (think getting your site permanently banned from search engines!) These ways are called “Black Hat” and can include hiding competitors or bogus keywords into your website codes, or placing text invisible to users on your site for search engines to fine. Stay away from these tactics!

So to optimize your website properly, the search engines need to see that the content on your site is more relevant to a given search than your competitors. To do this, make sure your content is readable and relevant. Put descriptive titles on each of your pages. Make good meta description tags (these are words placed on the website code that let the search engines know what your site is about). Try repeating your keywords throughout your site (but don’t overload it or it becomes annoying for the reader), and possible bold them if it fits into your content. Also, use alt and title tags on your images.

One of the best things you can do to move your site into a better position is to get other websites who have content relative to yours to link to your site. Try getting your site on relevant directories or news sites. The more trustworthy and the higher rank these websites have, the better it makes your site look.

SEO takes time and effort, and you must constantly watch what your competitors are doing and keep up with the latest tactics, but doing so can mean the difference between your site getting lost in virtual space or being up front where you are likely to succeed!

One of the most important steps you should take with internet marketing is Tracking Your Results! By doing so, you can identify which marketing techniques are working (and therefore making you money), and which techniques are not working (therefore costing you money). You can only tell if your marketing is successful if it generates measurable results for your business.

Of equal importance is that you are not only tracking your results, but that you Track the Right Results! Knowing how many people visit your website is not important if you don’t go on to track how many of these people complete the main objective or your site (buying a product, subscribing to a newsletter, etc); also called a conversion.

There are several easy ways to track your results. Google uses a monitoring tool called Google Analytics, which monitors each visit to your website, which pages viewers visit, if they complete a conversion, and so on. You can also easily add tagging URLs to the hyperlinks of your website to track such things as how people were lead to your site, how many pages they view, where they exit your site, etc. All of this information can be analyzed to create more successful marketing techniques.

If you are successful in your tracking, you will be able to identify and concentrate on those marketing techniques which are generating the most profit. Remember: Successful Tracking leads to Successful Marketing which leads to a Successful Website!