SEO / Website Optimization Techniques

rnIn the world of eCommerce and web-based business, SEO is hugely important. Imagine the value of appearing at the #1 spot in Google for a popular search term? As a result, SEO is a complex affair, but there are a number of straightforward procedures that can be followed in order to improve your search engine ranking, and consequently, your online business. First of all we need to be clear that SEO is an ongoing process; its not a case of making a few changes and then reaping the financial rewards. The different areas of focus are iterative - make some changes, view the impact, and if necessary, make some more changes. A good SEO campaign NEVER stops. So, onto the tips. 1) Keyword Research Always start with keyword research. Which words are relevant to your business? Which words do you think users will type into search engines when looking for the services you offer? Which words are synonyms/closely related? It can be useful to use a thesaurus in some cases. Which keywords are your highly-ranked competitors using? 2) Edit Meta Title Tags Title tags are the most important META tag on your webpage. Be sure to include your most important keywords, don’t bother with your brand name. If you must include your brand, place it at the end. Make sure that your title tags are unique for every page. Keep to 65 characters (current Google limit). 3) Edit Meta Description Tags As with title tags, include as many relevant keywords as possible, keep to 165 characters. 4) Write extra content for pages Content is king! A site with unique, interesting content will always win over spammy sites with auto-generated nonsense. When writing new content, review your list of keywords and try to include as many as possible within the pages. 5) Link-building A very important step. Without inbound links from other well-ranked sites, it’s unlikely that your site will have a decent PageRank. Conduct research to formulate a list of related-sites that you think might link to you. View your competitors inbound links using a tool such as Linkscape or Yahoo Site Explorer. Add your website link to social networks – Facebook, Flickr, Twitter….there are hundreds! 6) Measure your results A process isn’t very useful if you don’t know whether it’s working. Be sure to set a baseline before you begin the project (eg. 100 unique visitors per day), and measure whether that baseline has improved/declined since you made the changes. Of course you’ll want to measure more than just one metric, so set up an analytics program such as Google Analytics, which is completely free and very easy to use. There are of course, many more things that can and should be done in order to improve your search engine ranking, but that would cover an entire book. Speaking of which,