Search engine optimization is an important part of a company’s online strategy. If your company is trying to improve its website and increase its rank in the search engines then you must optimize your website. Read the advice below for some ways to increase your website’s traffic and popularity in the search engines.
The most important part of SEO is making sure your site has unique and fresh content. If the content on your site does not appear elsewhere on the web, the search engines will weigh it more highly than copied content. On the same token, newer content is weighted more highly than aging content.
Use keywords in URLs for increasing traffic and expanding your search engine optimization. Do not choose URLs with numbers. If at all possible, use words. This will increase the probability in your site being found quickly during a consumer’s search. The keywords in the URL should also be included on the site itself.
Include a transcript for closed captions with your online videos to help drive more traffic to your site. The major search engines will scan these transcripts for keywords, so adding them to your videos will help bring you more traffic.
One interesting way to implement a 301 redirect is to use a link shortening site such as Bit.ly. The benefit of using a site such as Bit.ly is that it shortens the link, and your site is provided with the click credit for the link, rather than Bit.ly receiving the credit itself.
Having a blog will keep your website new and fresh and will help your ranking with search engines. Search engines crawl through websites to find new, updated content. Blogs that get crawled more frequently have more authority and a higher ranking. If you blog, you are ensuring you will constantly have new content.
Don’t let your websites URLs look like this: http://exampledomain.com/?session_id=37. These URLs come from session ID or dynamic addressing. While such systems can help you organize complex websites, note that the URLs they generate don’t say anything about the pages they reference. Permanent, descriptive URLs are another place you can include keywords for search engines to pick up when they index your site.
To get a significant page rank boost from a single link, sponsor a non-profit .edu domain site. Any site must meet strict criteria to obtain this domain and because of that, a link from a .edu domain will increase your page rank significantly. Sponsoring a site is one of the most cost efficient ways to boost your page rank.
Writing unique content is an overlooked SEO strategy. The Internet is filled with free information. The best way for your information to get attention is by using information that is either very specific or not widely published. This will give your site a competitive edge over those using stale and widely published information.
You should keep the URL structure of your site as clear as possible. This will make your site easy to navigate, but also, easy to index for better ranking in search results. You can classify your pages in different categories or by chronological order. Find what works best for the type of website that you have.
For search engine optimization use keywords within site content in a relevant way! Search engine algorithms are complex and in a constant state of flux. As they become increasingly advanced, it will no longer be enough to simply rely on keywords to drive traffic. Keywords are not meant to be used as placeholders on your site; they must be included within the site content in a meaningful and relevant way.
Pay attention to where you links go and where your homepage is. If you have a suffix appended to the URL for your homepage, such as “index.html”, you could be harming your search engine rankings. External links will most likely not include the suffix, while internal links will, which causes the spiders to see fewer links to both locations.
When optimizing your site, pay attention to the weight of external links. Being linked from a site with a .edu is better than a .com or other suffix. You can get a link from a .edu site by finding an academic institution or charity that is looking for sponsors, and offer money in exchange for links or ads.
The W3C says, “Cool URLs don’t change.” Avoid like the plague, changing the page names on your site or you’ll lose their page rank along with it. If you do have to change the page name, set up a 301 redirect to point to the new location. But really, just don’t do it!
If you have to have less attractive pages on your website, such as user profiles, then bury those links. You can place the links into JavaScript so that search engines will ignore them. You don’t want them indexed because this can spread out your link juice and lower your general page rank.
When optimizing your website for search engines, it is important you make one or two changes at a time. If you do too much at once you won’t be able to tell which change affected your Page Rank negatively or positively, and it’s also possible to have both good and bad changes which cancel each other out, confusing you even further.
Set up a site map page for the search engines. This will help the search engine spiders find and index the important pages of your site. The site map page can make a huge difference in your site’s visibility if it has a navigation menu that is difficult to crawl. If you have a large site, make a few site map pages. Don’t put more than 100 links on each page.
Do not forget that you should design your website for your web users, first and foremost. When your web users can find your site easily, and your site is well organized in its navigation and rich in relevant content, you site will do well in the ranks. A website that is organically optimized always does better in ranks than a website that is artificially pumped up with keywords.
Search engine optimization is critical to the success of any online business. Use these tips to improve your site’s search engine ranking quickly, and by extension to increase your traffic and resulting sales.
