Good search engine placement is vital for the success of your site. You can have The Best Website Ever Made but if nobody can find it on Google, Yahoo, or MSN, it’s not worth having. However, if you sell shoes and your site is #3 for ‘purses’, that doesn’t really help you. Simply having your site in the top 10 isn’t enough- the keywords need to be targeted, and that starts with well-written, relevant content.
Simple Steps to Basic Search Engine Optimization
- Choose your target keywords. These are the words that you think people will most likely search for when trying to find a site like yours. Including keywords you want to highlight is important for attracting visitors looking for your product or service.
- Write relevant content. Text content is the only way that search engines will know what you’re trying to say. They can’t read images or most Flash animations, so use text whenever possible. You don’t need a novel- 200-300 words on each page is enough for search engines (however, by all means include more if the visitor will need the information!)
- Create accessible, standards-compliant code. Or find someone who can! The programming behind the pretty graphics is also important. Clean, standards-based HTML code is easily read and processed by search engine spiders, not to mention it will decrease your page size.
- Get inbound links to your site. The major search engines use link-analysis to determine the importance of a webpage. So getting a link back to your site from a highly-rated, relevant website can give you a huge advantage. Submitting your website to free online directories that are related to your industry (for example, a freelance writer forum) can give you a great start. Or offer to exchange links with a similar website- you’d be surprised how willing some website owners are to do this.
- Submit your URL. While it won’t guarantee an automatic inclusion on the first page of every search engine, it will help your site to be indexed. But be patient- it can still take a month or two for a brand new website to be included.