When marketing on the Internet, the hunt is always on for ways to better our ranking on the search engines. Improving the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of our content is one of the best ways.
Here are seven basic things you can do to improve the SEO of your website:
1. Domain Name – Having a domain name that contains the keywords that you are trying to rank for can have a significant effect on your placement in search engine rankings. AnytownManufacturedHomes.com will draw a lot better search results for “manufactured home anytown” than say, MurphyHomes.com. Could you improve your search engine rankings by changing your domain name?
2. Clear, keyword-rich URLs – When a Search Engine robot spiders your web page there a number of factors that influence how it indexes your page. The page name should clearly indicate the purpose of the page. A page named “manufactured-homes-in-anytown.html” does a much better job of that than a page names “homes.html” or worse yet “showcase.html” Can you improve your website’s SEO by using a better URL structure?
3. Keyword-rich Page Title – The page title may be the single most important element in your SEO strategy. If the content of the page is “Manufactured Homes in Anytown”, that should be the page title. I have seen many websites where the page titles either don’t match the content or are absent entirely. Do your page titles match the content of each page on your site?
4. Keyword-rich Heading – The heading is usually the first line before the content of a web page (see image below). It should contain the keywords for the page content. For maximum SEO effect, it should be wrapped in <h1> tags.
5. Keywords used in first paragraph of text – Always use the keywords of the page once or preferably twice in the first paragraph. Over use will hurt you as much as overuse. Be sure that the use of the keywords fits naturally into the flow of the text. Gratuitous use is also a no-no.
6. Image filenames and ALT tags – One keyword-use opportunity often missed even by professional developers is in the filenames and “ALT” tags of images on the page. “ALT” tags are what a browser displays when an image fails to load for some reason. Since images are generally used to support text, their filenames and “ALT” tags should easily contain page keywords. Do not try to cram keywords into images such as bullet points, spacers, etc. These images should contain “ALT” tags but the tags should be empty to help support easy access for those using text-to-speech technology.
7. Use keyword-rich text for internal links – When you link inside you website to other pages or articles, never use just “Click Here” as link text. That doesn’t help you at all. If a link is to a “recently installed home in anytown” use that as the link text. It helps SEO for the linked page.
Well, that’s seven tips for improving your web pages SEO. If you use them, you should be able to move up a few notches on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
If you are using WordPress, Joomla! or another CMS system, the software will handle most of these automatically. If not, they need to be coded by hand. Do not underestimate their importance. If you aren’t sure your website is taking advantage of these SEO methods, you should have your website reviewed professionally.
