Tune-Up Your Homepage In 10 Minutes

Most online businesses become successful by optimizing their websites. If you think your home page is search engine friendly, think again. Even some of the Fortune 500 companies have far from optimized websites.

Optimizing your website can be done in 10 minutes. Just follow the four simple steps below.

1. Identify your website’s keywords. Most online businessmen overlook the importance of identifying the keywords and phrases their homepages target. When tuning up your website, the first step you need to do is identify 4 to 7 of your top keywords and phrases to be able to use them on your homepage.

2. Review your keyword placement. Look at your list of keywords and pick the most important of them. After doing that, load these words on the right places.

The keyword or key phrase should appear at the beginning of a title tag to make it optimal then work in as many more keywords as you can. The page title, when possible, must be only 5 to 8 words long. Even the META description must start with the top keyword and phrase – not with a “Welcome to…” phrase. Ensure, though, that the page title and META description are sensible enough as they will be displayed in search engines.

The top keyword and phrase must also be squeezed in the first text of the page and wrapped in an H1 tag. Other keywords should also be visible farther down the page in H2 headings.

Where else should the keywords appear? The top keywords should, when possible, be in the first few words of the page’s paragraph then other keywords to the rest of the text. Even hyperlinks should have the top keywords linking to internal site pages. If navigation links are attached to images, have the keywords in the ALT property of the images.

If you think it still makes sense, have the bottom of the page reflect the top keywords and phrases again. If it will be nonsense, don’t fret over the fact that you cannot place the words in the closing text. The site map will also be a good place to have the keywords and phrases.

3. Check links. It is only logical to doublecheck if each and every one of your links is active and working.

4. Validate HTML. Invalid HTML makes it hard to impossible for search engines to read your homepage. This is why it’s important to run your HTML through a validator. There are free online HTML validators online – make use of them.

And those are the four steps you can follow – and it’s on to a higher ranking homepage.