If you have an online business, you understand how important SEO is for your growth and sales. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practices used in order to increase your site’s rankings in the search engines like Google and Bing. If you are looking for SEO best practices or the easiest tips on how to get started for your own business, then look no further
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1. Make sure your site utilizes SEO web design – Your site architecture matters. If you are really looking to be successful, then you will hire a design company with a good background in SEO work. While Flash designs look pretty and you might think you are getting the best website for your money, the truth is that search engine spiders have a hard time crawling these types of sites. If they can’t crawl your site, your rankings will take a hit. The structure of your site should be easily indexed and your navigation should be concise and easily understood. If you are paying for custom web design, make sure that the designer looks at both SEO best practices as well as user appeal. Don’t bury important content on a page that requires eight different clicks in order to see. This is helpful advice not only for the best results in the search engines, but for your users too.
2. Write unique content – Make sure that the writing on your site is completely unique. Don’t copy and paste the manufacturer’s descriptions for your products. This might be easy, but duplicated content will not rank well in the search engines. When you are writing content, be sure to include keywords that people search for. It’s tempting to stuff your content with as many keywords as possible, but content stuffing won’t really help your rankings. Instead, if you want to give those keywords more importance, make those keywords links or put them in your heading.
3. Utilize social media – You will grow your traffic if you get your company out there. Yes, it takes time, but it will be worth it in the end. If you do not know where to start, look for guest blogging opportunities where the blogger will let you link to your website. The more links you can get, the better.
4. Build backlinks – These links that go to your site indicate to the search engines that your site is important enough to be linked to by outside sources. If you can get high ranking sites to link to your content, or sites with a .edu or .gov address, then you will be doing well. One great way to get backlinks is by publishing press releases that are pertinent to your industry.
5. Don’t bite off more than you can chew when it comes to SEO – Start small and learn what you are doing. Don’t try to optimize for every keyword that could possibly be related to your industry. Instead, work on a few keywords that you think will bring the highest return in terms of customers and sales.
6. Keep going – You can’t optimize your site and think you are good to go. SEO rules are constantly changing and search engines love fresh content. Make sure you stay ahead of the game and do your part to ensure your site stays relevant. Do your research to stay informed of any SEO changes and look up the best keywords for your site.
Search engine optimization might seem like a lot of work, but the truth is that it matters. If you want to show up in the search engines, then you will need to put in some time. If you regularly do your part, then you will see your organic traffic from the search engines grow.
