At a social gathering this week, two different people came up to me and introduced themselves, and then started telling me that they have websites, but to traffic to the site (no web visitors). What should they do?
I later looked at their websites, and decided to write this followup article to How to Find Keywords and Keyphrases that People are Actually Using that I posted a few months ago. So here we go . . .
Getting Started with Search Engine Optimization – Five Easy Steps
Here are five simple steps that will get your website some results. This is only the beginning, of course, but if you designed your own website, you can probably do all five of these yourself.
1. Header tags
header tags
Think of these as your headlines and sub-heads. Header tags tell the search engines what content is important. For most of us, there are 3 levels of header tags, H1, H2, and H3, with the H1 tag indicating the most important headline.
What goes in this headline? How ’bout some of your keywords! Aren’t those the most important words on your page? (hint: see my previous article linked above)
2. Meta tags
Although use of these tags seems to have diminished in the past 198 months, it’s generally a good practice (and certainly won’t hurt!) to use them. They go in the <head> portion of your web page.
metatags
The “keyword” meta tag lists your keyword phrases. Be sure to add your city and state if you’re marketing locally.
The “description” tag is intended to be a brief and concise description of your page’s content. This description will likely appear in search engine results.
3. Have a sitemap
sitemap
All pages in your small business site should ideally be linked from your home page. In addition, you’ll want a sitemap. . . a stand-alone page of code that can easily be read by the search engines. If you want to take the easy route, simply go to http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and this site will generate your sitemap for you. Of course, you still need to upload it to your website, by following their easy directions.
4. Title and alt tags for every image
Title and alt tags for each image help the search engines, but also are great for accessibility and screen readers. Use you keywords judiciously here — don’t just jam in all the keywords you have!
5. Link building
web links
Link building is about who links to your website. If major websites in your industry, or in your town, link to your website, it will start rising higher in the search engine results. For the very best results, try to have the site that link to you use one of your keyword phrases as the text for the link.
