You’ve got your website up and filled with content and information about your business. You’ve been using FaceBook and Twitter to try and move traffic to your site but those darn visitors aren’t coming the way you thought they would.
Look at the very top of your computer screen while you are on your home page. What does that say? Now move to another page within your website and look at the top of your screen again, what does that say? Does it say the same thing the home page said? Does it use words that someone looking for your type of business might type into a search engine?
The sentence at the very top of your screen, the title tag, is what the search engines go through and read. That sentence should define your business. Does it? Does each page in your website have a different page title? It should.
Chris Smith of NetConcepts calls Google listings “your personal sales force” and if you aren’t doing search engine optimization (SEO) you’re “leaving money on the table.” SEO doesn’t just depend on page names but in fact five different tactics that when used together will drive more traffic to your website.
Here are the five legs of SEO
- Have topically relevant links from important sites (get incoming links from relevant sites that rank higher than your site).
- Anchor Text (link the search words in content on your site with other sites – don’t use “click here”).
- Keyword-rich title tags (these are the page titles at the top of your screen).
- Keyword-rich content (use the search words you want to be found by within text on your site).
- Internal hierarchical linking structure (have your site designed so links from one section to another follow a structure – basically if you make your site easy for the user to navigate around you will have completed this step).
Remember that the keywords you select for your site should be relevant to your business and popular with the people searching.
You may be interested in reading about why the Reader is Boss When Deciding on Content.
