Why is SEO So Important For Your Site

In this modern age, it is increasingly important to make sure your websites are optimized for the major search engines through the use of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices. The current top three search engines are Google, Yahoo and Bing. Let's face it though; Google is the major player and they set the standards when it comes to the Internet search industry.

If done properly, there are a few basic practices you can follow to make your site more friendly to the search engines and thus rank higher for certain keyword phrases when users search for them. Being at the top of the search engines for your target keywords is a make or break factor for the success of your business.

There are millions of websites in existence and there could be thousands competing for the keywords you want to rank highly for. The Internet is a very competitive marketplace so it is vital to stay on top of the current SEO trends. Not being recognized by the top search engines can be very frustrating, especially after putting a lot of work and money into creating and designing your website.

Each search engine uses a different algorithm to conduct their searches. These algorithms are kept secret by the companies and are always changing but there are numerous people in the search industry whose jobs consists of attempting to deconstruct these algorithms to figure out how the engines rank pages.

In order to increase your web page's rank in the search engine results:

Keywords:

· Remember that content will always be king. Fill your web pages with relevant information that will help visitors - search engines love this.

· Fill your content with your target keywords but don't overdo it! Do not stuff your content with your keywords. This is known as keyword density. Make sure that you have no more than one keyword hyperlink per 100 words of content. If the pages of your site contain relevant keywords to a searcher's search phrase then your site has a higher likelihood of appearing on the results pages.

· Be specific with your keywords. If you are selling "Men's Nike Air Jordans" target that phrase not "Michael Jordan shoes."

· When choosing keywords, put yourself in the shoes of the searcher. What would you search (WWYS).

Meta Tags (Title, Description & Keywords):

· The title tag is what appears on the top of your web browser. For SEO purposes, you need to use your first targeted keyword at the beginning of your title and try to describe what your website is all about In 10-15 words.

· The keyword tag consists of the list of keywords you have put together in your market research. Search your competitors websites and see what keywords they are using than rank them in order of relevancy from first to last.

· The description tag is a short explanation about the content of your website and its topic. Keep this under 20-25 words and try to use at least three to four target keywords. This is what users will see on the search engine results pages under the link to your site.

· For the best SEO results, edit the meta tags for each page of your website to match the contents of that specific page.

Submit Your Site to the Search Engines:

It is a quick and painless process to submit to the top search engines. Simply visit the search engines' websites and fill out the submission forms.

You should probably also submit your website to the DMOZ.org directory. It can take a few months to get listed but it is a great SEO technique and most sites listed in the directory get higher priority in the search results over sites that are not listed.

Patience is a virtue when it comes to submission. It can take days or weeks for the search engine spiders to actually crawl your website.

Build Links by Submitting Your Site to Directories and Niche Websites:

· The more meaningful links from high ranked websites linking to your site, the higher your search rating. This does not mean you should practice "link farming" or paying for links.

· The best way to be featured in directories is to make a profile with a link to your page.

· Article marketing is another very valuable SEO tactic. Write articles with keyword hyperlinks pointing to your page. Other sites are happy to have quality content and you obtain linkage so both sides win! You will also see direct traffic from these links which will help your site gain popularity.

· Link building is a time-consuming process that takes time to see the results so again - be patient!

By following these simple SEO tactics, you can raise your ranking in the search engines!



Forrest Yingling is the Marketing Director for WebNet Hosting, premier Miva Hosts offering reliable and fully PCI Compliant Miva Hosting services at the industry's most affordable prices.




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How to Increase Website Traffic - Simple But Important SEO Tricks

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing help people find companies and services online. For businesses it's an excellent opportunity for free marketing. But if your website shows up on Google page three or higher, chances are that companies with better ranking will snatch potential customers from you.

This article talks about how to improve search engine optimization (SEO), how to get the most out of your keywords, and how to make your website more visible to Internet users.

Choose your keywords carefully

When coming up with keywords for your web copy and SEO strategy, find a balance between words that are specific for your business and words that people actually type in the search window. For example, if you specialize in wedding flowers arrangements, the keyword "flowers" is too general and wouldn't do much for you. "Wedding bouquets" is a better choice. "Yellow chrysanthemum", on the other hand, is too narrow.

Do you need some inspiration? Here's a trick: go to the website of a competitor that ranks well. In the web browser menu, go to View and View source. A new window will open up with all the information about that page. Look for meta keywords and you might get ideas for keywords to use, or not to use, on your company site. We don't recommend being a copycat, hopefully your website has something very unique to offer, but it doesn't hurt to check out what the competitors are up to.

When you incorporate your keywords in the website copy, make sure to include the most important words in the first paragraph of each page. Finally, keep in mind that you write for humans, not for machines, so don't overstuff your copy with keywords.

Understand the use of meta keywords

It's important to point out that meta keywords won't do wonders to SEO and website traffic. In fact, many search engine algorithms don't care much about meta keywords. However, as long as you do it right, it doesn't hurt to have them. In my opinion, having 5-15 carefully chosen meta keywords per page is better than having no keywords at all.

While general meta keywords won't have a great impact on ranking, putting keywords in page titles (or meta titles) can make quite a difference. Instead of having ordinary page titles like "Welcome to Company X" or "About", make sure you have descriptive page titles, for example "Welcome to Company X, Specialist in Y, City State" and "About Company X, experts in Y products".

Alt tags and alt titles are text that describes images. It shows when the mouse hover over an image, or when a picture doesn't load properly. Again, they don't do wonders to SEO but it doesn't hurt to have them.

In the end, the most important place for keywords is in your website copy.

Avoid competing with the whole World Wide Web

It's extremely tough for a small business, or a start-up company with a brand new website, to compete online with literally thousands of companies in the same industry with bigger marketing budgets. If you own a local business that only serves a certain city, state, or even country, zoning in on your geographical area can improve your ranking. If applicable for your business, include geographical areas in page titles, meta tags, website copy, and in other content elements of the website.

For example, if you own a small florist shop in Tampa Florida, the keyword "flowers" is like a needle in a haystack. Google it and you will get about 150 million hits. "Floral services Tampa Florida" on the other hand reduces the search engine competition significantly.

Images and videos make crawlers blind

Search engine spiders don't see images, flash videos, slide shows, etc. If your homepage is nothing but pictures and banners, search engines won't be able to crawl the page and take information from it. It's just as if the page were empty. So make sure you have at least one or two paragraphs of copy (text) on your pages, especially on the homepage.

Be inviting - Have control over Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are one or two short sentences of what a webpage is about, and on search engine sites they show up as preview snippets underneath the page title. They are important because people read them and determine if the site is of interest. If you haven't entered any meta descriptions, the search engine will take whatever it can grab from the page, and it's not always what you want Internet users to see. Also, if your homepage has a lot of images, the crawler can't read the page, and it will grab the few random word it can see on the site. Google sometimes ignores the meta descriptions and grabs text directly from the site, so again, make sure to have at least one paragraph of quality copy on each page.

When you write your meta descriptions (or web copy paragraphs) you want them to be descriptive, informative, and inviting. Have a look at your ranking competitors and ensure your preview snippets are the best.

Link building - A way to increase popularity

Popularity is important for search engine ranking, and links are a way to measure it. The more web pages that refer to your site, the higher the likelihood to rank well. The higher you rank, the more people see your site, and the higher the odds are people will talk about it on the web. And around and around it goes. In other words, external linking is good. Contact companies you trust about exchanging links, write a blog, and share your links in respectable and appropriate forums. But be careful not to overdo it, nobody likes an annoying spammer.

A word of caution: there are companies out there offering linking services or link exchange programs. Don't end up in so-called bad neighborhoods, a.k.a. websites with questionable content. It could sabotage your ranking. Do your homework before you buy any link building services.

When it comes to internal linking (links within your own site), avoid the generic "click here". Instead, create link text that describes the link well, e.g. "information on server virtualization".

How do I know if my efforts are paying off?

After you've put all this hard work into choosing keywords and putting them in various places, you want to find out if it's actually working. The obvious step is to enter your keywords on different search engine sites, and see if your website shows up on the first page. You may also notice a rise in inquiries about your company, or even better, an increase in sales. But in case you don't get the ranking results you were hoping for (keep in mind it can take time), you need black on white website data in order to analyze and improve your web traffic.

Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools offer great free online devices for accessing information about your website visitors and their behaviors. And remember, whether your results are fantastic or you get a bit disappointed, nothing on the web is static. There's always room for changes and improvements!

Next step - Attractive and persuasive website copy

Once your website attracts more and more visitors, you need to keep them interested and inspire them to come back for more. In my article "What makes for great web content " I talk about important factors for successful website copywriting, such as attract visitors with compelling text, easy-on-the-eyes website structure, and how to convert visitors to customers.



Lena Edstrom is a writer and editor with years of experience in the copywriting and web content field. She has helped numerous companies with website content and SEO strategies. As a native Swede with office in Chicago IL, Lena helps Swedish business owners, who want to launch their businesses in the U.S., by translating and adopting marketing material to the North American market.

Visit Lena Edstrom's website at http://www.edcwriting.com for more information and advice on copywriting, web content, and search engine optimization (SEO).




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SEO For Landing Pages - Reasons Landing Page SEO is Important

Essentially the most crucial things you must keep in mind when building your website of any form is not to end the efforts after the web site is finished. A company can invest hundreds of thousands on developing a remarkable and unique internet site or maybe generating properly planned out content or even a user friendly E-store, however, if they never spend time studying marketing tactics like Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) they could not ever experience anywhere near the volume of visitors they are seriously hoping for.

Carrying out work on your landing page SEO is crucial. In the UK 95% of all net end users admit to regularly using a search engine to locate information, and search engine giant Google owns a seriously high per-cent in the market. Meaning that the vast majority of traffic online is coming direct from Google, and it implies that doing well in Google will directly increase the traffic on your website. Furthermore, it means participating in mediocre work won't help very much - over 80% of individuals never go beyond the first 3 pages for a Google search.

Effective SEO is all about providing excellent content and permitting search engines like Google to know about it, the best you are able to. Meaning doing detailed keyword research to understand exactly how users might find your site along with what are the ideal terms are to target a high ranking with. This would mean writing high quality articles in your field or maybe establishing a blog to develop into a thought leader.

Landing page SEO is very important because this is the first thing these potential customers will see. It is astonishing just the amount of professional internet sites you will certainly discover that do not have a title tag on the main webpage or will not use header tags in spite of how crucial they can be for SEO. Header and title tags like h1, h2 and h3 not only help make your site look a lot more organised and easier to read but most importantly allow Google to speak with your site faster and easier, resulting in an overall growth within search engine rankings.

In a very similar manner making sure all of your current images are tagged using and tags may also help SEO a great deal and requires only a few minutes to achieve. It might be obvious to a human exactly what they are reviewing when you upload a image of a laptop which you have for sale, but Google in no way that smart and requires some help in identifying what your picture is. When working on your landing page SEO, one of the important components to building your search ranking will be to get individuals to link to the content you've created. If you're currently creating unique and well written content this shouldn't be too challenging at all. When obtaining inbound links, it's important to make certain that anything leading to your landing page SEO will certainly make sense. Ensure relevant keywords are being applied as the link anchors in order that Google recognizes the place that the link is going. If Google understands the place where a link will be sending a reader, it is more than likely that the reader has a much better idea, as well.

As you can tell, SEO is certainly not really about keyword stuffing aiming to trick Google. You cannot succeed with SEO if you try to take shortcuts. A long term well thought out and diligently researched SEO campaign being run by an ethical SEO agency will be the only legitimate way you will get search engine optimisation to actually work for your enterprise, and it shouldn't be overlooked.



Kingpin-seo is an Ethical SEO Agency based in the UK, serving websites worldwide. Kingpin-seo are Google News approved for press release publication, meaning they are very well positioned to carry out both SEO and brand awareness for their clients.




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