Five SEO Tips To Improve
Your Search Engine Ranking
By David Leonhardt
"Dear David: I just created a website on baby toy safety. What should
I do to make sure gazillions of people find me through the search
engines?"
I can't promise you gazillions, but there are a few things you should do to
make it easy for search engines to find you. I assume you have already decided
to submit your site to the major search engines and directories. I assume that
you will develop some sort of linking strategy (hopefully a better strategy
than most websites use today). I also assume you will have picked key search
terms for all the pages on your website.
Beyond that, here are my top five tips for making your website easy for
those "gazillions" to find it.
- A picture might be worth a thousand words, but search engines don't read
pictures. Make sure your key search terms are written out in text, not
part of a graphic title you hire somebody to prepare for you. That also
means you should not just show pictures of toys, but also write out the
names, and possibly a keyword description with the title.
- Have several pages of articles related to your website's topic. Use a
different keyword search term for each article. For instance, one article
might use frequently the term "safe toys for babies", while
another might use the term "baby safety".
- What's the URL of your website? Your name won't help you there. Your key
search term will. In this instance, I might pick www.baby-toy-safety.com,
for example (if that is one of your top keyword phrases). Hire somebody
who knows what he is doing to develop the right keyword strategy for you
BEFORE you choose your domain name.
- What's the title of your page? I don't know how many times I see titles
such as "Article" or "Contact us". Don't expect the
search engine robots to get all excited about that term. And don't expect
anybody to search for that term, either. Much better to title your page
"Free article on safe toys for babies" or "Contact the
*Baby Toy Expert* today". By the way, this is the single most
important place to include your keyword phrases.
- What about that navigation menu that appears on every single page of
your website? Does it say "Contact the baby toy expert?" Or
"about the baby toy expert". Or links about baby toys?"
Need I say more?
If your website is about life insurance, you have little hope of hitting the
front pages of any search engine. "Life insurance" is such a
competitive search engine marketplace. Unless, of course, people are searching
for a very specific and rare niche. Even then, I suspect you will need much
more than these five tips.
In fact, there are dozens, if not hundreds of things you can do to win the
search engine race. These top five search engine optimization tips are a great
start, whatever your website is about.
