Search Engine Optimization

Most of your website traffic comes from the search engines. Pay per click is too expensive for 99% of websites to make a workable profit margin.

You need to balance optimization for the search engines with sales conversion power for your customers. It is this fine line that ultimately decides if your website is going to successful or not.

There is no science behind search engine optimization. Even experts in search engine optimization don’t know how the search engines rank a site.

Google is the one search engine that should be sending the most traffic. You can take part in link exchanges and make submissions to directories, but Google is the place where you can get the most site visitors. This means that your primary focus should be on ranking high in search engines. In this article, we will look at some tips and techniques to help you get a good search engine ranking.

Keywords

Do your research thoroughly and make sure your keywords appear in headings and in about 3% to 6% of your copy.

The more specific the keywords then the less potential traffic but more chance of being near the top of the Google ranking. If you use a term that is too general, you will be competing with every business that is closely related to yours. Be as specific as you can so that you are targeting the visitors looking for your type of business with those specific phrases.

My personal experience is that Google is becoming less and less useful. The pages at the top of the rankings are all parts of very large websites that repeat the same information. people are not looking to read copy that they can get in an encyclopedia, they are looking for something that will change their lives for the better.

If your business is more specialized, you can target your keyword phrases to be even more specific. Avoid keyword phrases that are too general.

Page Optimization

When you get your keywords and keyword phrases together, put them on your website so the search engines will associate your business with those words. Use one or two keywords per page. The keywords will need to be included in your title tag, meta keywords tag, and meta description. The meta keywords tag does not get much notice by Google, so you do not have to spend as much time with this area as the others.

Here are some ways that you can put the keywords in your website in the best manner:

• Put a main heading tage (H1) on the top of the page that has your keyword phrase. Then put a second levcel heading tag (H2) after it that has your other keywords or keyword phrases. Use the tags in the correct order and make sure that you use both. You will probably use other heading tags (H3 and H4) but don't overdo this

• In the body of your page, use your keywords and keyword phrases. Don’t overdo it, though. You don’t want to be accused of keyword stuffing, which comes with penalties.

• Make use of bold, underlines, and italics to emphasize your keywords in the body of your page.

• Use bullet points and numbered lists on your page and incorporate your keywords. Make sure the list looks natural.

• Use alternate text tags with all images. This use of alternate text will describe the images that are on your website, which allows blind users to know what the images are on your site. You can use some keywords in that text. Google and Yahoo both index this text.

Balance Your Content

Remember that the point of your website is to provide a service or a product to your customers so keep it balanced. Remember that the content on the site is the most important part of the site. Give the visitor a reason to stay at your site. Include information visitors want. The search engines will determine that your site is relevant if it contains articles and information about your products or services.

You can find good content from many of the article directories on the Internet. The only thing that you will be required to do when you use this content is provide a link to the author’s website. If you can, you should write some articles for your website. Search engines will know if you are using articles that come from another website, so you should have some original content on your site.