There are many ways to get your website a high ranking in the major search engines and all of them include a lot of hard work, patience and attention to detail. Google is continually fine tuning their search algorithm in order to provide you with the best possible, most relevant results for a particular phrase or keyword. In order to rank on that first page organically there are a number of factors to consider. Here are five things you can do to get started:
1, Keyword Analysis: The process of researching and documenting the words or phrases that best describe your website and/or business. Research your competition and other closely related websites and find out what keywords best describe their websites. A great tool for this is the Google Keyword Tool. Also, use your imagination and put yourself at the keyboard of the person who might be searching for your products or services. What words or phrases would they use to describe your products or services?
2, Website Copy: The keyword analysis you performed in step one is the foundation for developing your website copy. You will want to use those keywords and/or phrases as liberally as possible throughout your content and website design whilst maintaining the interest of the reader. You don’t want a bunch of random phrases and keywords strung together in hopes of getting a better ranking. This will in fact have an adverse effect. Google is wise to the old keyword stuffing techniques of the past and will penalize you for trying it.
3, Website Design: A well planned and thought-out website design will bear many fruits in the world of SEO. Your website design should have your keywords and phrases incorporated into the meta tags and html code. Reduce the amount of formatting code within your html files (Code Bloat) by using CSS and external style sheets, and not using tables for anything other than tabular data. Frames are also a not a good idea as the major search engines don’t like them.
Use of flash, animated images and excessive graphics should be kept to a minimum. Remember, for the most part search engines can’t read text within graphics or flash.
Structure is also an important factor. Your pages should be organized by major topic and not have too many levels. One to two levels should be adequate and search engines will generally not go deeper. Internal linking and site navigation are also very important factors to consider. Use your keywords and phrases in your links instead of “click here” or “follow this link”.
4, Link Building: There are several techniques for generating inbound links to your website, with some being more effective than others. One of the main factors is how well your website copy is written and how easy your website is to navigate. People will not link to poorly written or difficult to navigate websites. One thing to keep in mind is that quality is always better than quantity. Links from high ranking websites who have relevant content are going to help you with your ranking far better than multiple links from totally unrelated sites. That being said, another very effective way to build your inbound link count is to submit your site to internet directories under your specific or related business category.
5, Social Media: One of the best tools for building quality links to your website is the full suite of Social Media applications such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon and many others. These sites offer the opportunity for you to get involved in discussions and provide valuable insights, and at the same time provide links back to your website. You can also offer something of value like a white paper or an article that visitors can download and also link to.
Blogging is another very effective way to generate quality links back to your website. Provide some valuable insights to peak interest and provide links back to your web site for more comprehensive information. Always provide links back to your web site when you sign your blog entry as well. To add a blog to your site you can use WordPress for free (www.wordpress.org).
As you can see, it takes some effort to get that top ranking but at the end of the day if you put in that effort you should see a good return on your investment. Whether that investment is time or money you paid a qualified SEO consultant.
Cheers,
Kevin
SMB – www.smbibs.com
Hi I found your blog on AOL and enjoyed reading this post you have given some good information.I’ve bookmarked your site and will be back
Thanks Andrew, much appreciated…
Cheers,
Kevin
Good work. Will be back…
Thanks Marketing SEO, much appreciated.
Cheers,
Kevin
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by SMB Internet, Kevin Grant. Kevin Grant said: 5 Important SEO Factors to promote your brand online – http://bit.ly/cfpLef [...]
Hi I found your blog on bing and enjoyed reading this post you have given some good information.I’ve bookmarked your site and will be back
Been lookin for some useful information for the past hour thanks for this!
Awesome blog
Bookmarked.
Can I use part of your post in my website if I link you back?
Sure, go ahead and use part of my post…My intention is to help folks get their business noticed on the Internet…
Cheers,
Kevin
thanks !! very helpful post!
I’m sure we’re all aware about Googles desire to include site loading speed in their algorithm, so I thought you might find this technique to speed up your site by 3 to 4 times using a couple of lines of code interesting.
I think it’ll work with any site, but it’s particularly useful if you’re using a sluggish CMS like Wordpress (I think this site is Wordpress?).
Basically if your host has zlib compression enabled you can add 2 lines of code above the document type in your header.php, and when a visitors browser calls the pages, your server will automatically compress them and send the compressed file to their browser.
I don’t want to go into too much detail here, so if you search for it in Google you should find various sites with instructions.
I’ve been trying it with some of my sites (it takes a couple of minutes to add the code), and it does indeed make a massive difference.
I hope this helps
Dont forget that you should also have your email marketing system in place, you should have a lead capture or autoresponder on your site.If you dont have a site you can get a wordpress site done and hosted for very little money …around $250 gets you a customized professional wordpress site and google loves the wordpress structure and it ranks those sites very well.There are some very good internet marketing experts out there helping small businesses and for very reasonable costs.Prices may start at around $360 per month but you get value and there isnt an SEO out there offering to work for 10 bucks. Professional help is transparent, measureable and guaranteed for pre agreed targeted results. You get what you pay for.It can cut down your offline marketing costs too if you get it done properly. Thank you for this article! I’ve just found a easily wonderful news about panda marketing Try it!
Yup Google definitely uses page speed in it’s algorithm, so this is a great tip. Thanks for sharing…
Cheers,
Kevin
Thanks for bringing this up Nellie. Email marketing is a very useful tool to drive traffic to your website. I have done some extensive email marketing for my clients with very good results…We offer services to create a Wordpress site with an autoresponder and much more. You can have a look at our services here: SMB Services
Cheers,
Kevin
I think your article was secretly a awesome start to a potential series of write ups about this topic. Most bloggers pretend to know what they’re preaching about when it comes to this area and in reality, very few people actually get it. You seem to grasp it however, so I think you should take it and run. Thanks!
[...] couple weeks back I posted an article on 5 Important SEO Factors. This week I would like to delve into the first one a little deeper and help folks understand the [...]
A friend of mine told me to check out your page. This is exactly the kind of information I was searching for. I wish I have encountered your blog sooner.
I’m going to coat-tail on what “Very Evolved” said… The way you connect to your audience is… Know who you are writing to. You need to pick a Target Audience and stick to them. You wouldn’t write to an audience of 14yr olds the same way you would write to an audience of 60yr olds.
I found myself regurgitating what you said in your 1 and 2 points while answering the three questions. =) I’ll be brief instead
interesting blog. It would be great if you can provide more details about it. Thanks you
Great blog post.Really looking forward to read more.
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See our contact page here: http://www.smbibs.com/contact.html
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