Steps for Enhancing Your Business’s Page Ranking
Your small business’s website should be very content rich.
It should offer something of value to the online users who visit it. It should include pictures, relevant information about your company and its services, helpful contact information and deals and promotions that reward the customers for visiting it.
If your website lacks in useful content, odds are your customer is going to go somewhere else.
This engaging content should also contain your primary and secondary targeted keywords.
This helps the major search engines to find and rank your webpage.
Your SEO goal is:
The customer types a keyword into the search engine and your website appears at the top of the SERP, inviting the viewer to click on your link to find out more.
Which specific targeted keywords you use is very important, but how you used them is just as important. You cannot simply insert your keywords- you must use On-Page Leverage tactics as well.
On-Page Leverage
On-Page Leverage refers to how you incorporate your targeted keywords into your website’s content, so that it will receive the highest possible ranking from search engines.
It refers to using the proper keyword densities as well. Proper keyword density is very important.
Keyword Density
The general rule for keyword density is that around 1-2% of the text be keywords.
Anywhere from 1% to 5 % keyword density is acceptable.
Avoid having more than 5% of your total text being keywords as this will most likely be recognized by search engine algorithms as “stuffed”.
To remove the practice of website’s stuffing as many keywords, relevant or not, into their websites in order to appear higher in SERPs, most search engines will not catalog your website if the keyword density is too high.
For example:
If your webpage has 500 words on it, then a 1% keyword density would show your keywords or keyword phrases 5 times.
The first step to be sure that your website has the right keyword density is to incorporate quality keywords into your content in a way that still allows the reader to easily read it.
Choose quality keywords or keyword phrases.
A keyword phrase can be 1-3 keywords long. Use plural keywords and suffixes to increase the keyword’s visibility. Place keywords intermittently around your website, in a way that allows for a continuous flow of the content. Also, place keywords in your Meta tags, your headings and subheadings and in your URL links too.
Don’t forget to put keywords into image descriptions as well.
There are several ways to determine the right keyword density for your website. There are websites with tools dedicated to helping you calculate the density of keywords in your webpage. Many of these tools are free.
Some examples of keyword calculating tools are:
Google Analytics
Google Toolbar- highlighter button
World’s Keyword Density Analyzer
A simple search for keyword analyzers will return many more tools that are available for you to use. These tools typically work by attempting to mimic search engine algorithms and remove stop words.
Stop words are ignored by search engines, so a sentence reading “learn to knit” would have the “to” removed. Then the tool will give you a table listing your website’s current keyword density.
Meta Tags
Your targeted keywords also need to appear within the website’s content, within its title, headings, sub-headings and html tags.
All of these places will boost how the search engines will rank the website.
All images that appear on your website must also contain optimized keywords. This is usually done through Meta Tags.
Meta Tags supply information about data to search engines. These tags will not be seen in the website’s content; instead they are inserted into the source code of the webpage. They serve to provide the search engine server with information about the webpage so that it can be indexed and categorized.
In order to receive the best SERP ranking you must incorporate keyword-laced Meta Tags in your source code.
There are lots of different forms of Meta Tags. One of the most common is the head tag, which gets its name because of where it is placed in the website. A head tag typically has a title tag, a Meta description tag and a Meta keywords tag.
For example:
<HEAD>
<TITLE> SEO Strategies</TITLE>
<META name= “description” content= “Using search engine optimization to increase traffic to your website.”>
<META name= “keywords” content= “SEO, search engines, keywords, internet business”>
</HEAD>
This title tag will be placed at the very top of the website viewer’s browser and will serve as the title of the webpage. The best keywords for your Meta Tags are at least 2 words and should be listed as early in the tag as possible.
For example:
Instead of using <”Dave’s Tile, Ceramic and Bathrooms”>, use <”Tile, Ceramic and Bathrooms by Dave”>. The title tag should always contain the company name and relevant keywords, and can be about 2-10 words in length. Each page of your website should have a unique set of title keywords.
The Meta description tag offers a short description of what content will appear on your website, so that online viewers will know what they will get if they choose to click on your website link.
The portion of the description that will be listed on the SERPs page will be found in quotations and can be up to 250 characters in length.
Typically the search engine will display fewer characters. It is important to create a Meta description that contains your keywords, preferably as close to the beginning of the description as possible.
By not writing your title and description tags too long, you will help prevent your sentences from being cut off by the search engines for being too large.
Many major search engines will create their own descriptions for your webpage content, usually taking a tidbit from your content.
Never the less, it is still important to create a keyword-rich Meta description tag.
Your images will also have Meta tags in their source code.
You will want to place your targeted keywords into your image Meta tags as well. Search engine algorithms love image tags, and with proper keyword use they will give a website with images a higher ranking.
Proper use of relevant keywords both in your website’s content and throughout its source code Meta tags is vitally important to getting the search engines to give your website a high SERP ranking.
Off-Page Leverage
Off-Page SEO leverage techniques refer to how the search engines will interpret your website’s relevance based on its linking structures to other websites.
This is how your website relates to others.
There are several Off-Page leverage techniques.
Backlinking
Your website’s content should also include a good number of backlinks.
Backlinks are incoming links to your website.
They appear as a word or phrase underlinedin the text. When a user clicks on these underlined words they are re-directed to another website. Search engines will often consider the number of backlinks attached to a website as one of the most important factors when ranking that website in its SERP.
They consider a backlink to be a vote of approval from another website and therefore will consider your website to be of a higher level of importance. By incorporating your targeted keywords into your backlinks you are also adding value in the eyes of search engines.
Developing a good list of backlinks from other websites to yours is one of the best ways to get noticed by search engines. Backlinks can be natural, meaning another website has linked to yours without you soliciting them to do so, or they can be solicited.
A good way to solicit a backlink is to offer a non-competing business a link to your website in exchange for a link to yours. These backlinks must be relevant to avoid punishment from the search engines. This means that the links must be based on the relevancy of the topic and keywords.
There are both good backlinks and bad backlinks.
Many people have attempted to cheat search engines by incorporating as many backlinks as possible into their websites, regardless of whether these backlinks are relevant to the webpage’s content or not.
Because cheating the search engines will get your website removed from them, you should understand how to use good backlinks to your advantage and be able to recognize bad backlinks to avoid the negative consequences that may accompany them.
Good Backlinks
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the visible text in a hyperlink, or a link that you can click on to backlink to another site.
This text can be written to contain keywords that will boost the ranking of the webpage in search engines and is typically under 60 characters. Not all backlinks require anchor text, because the title of the link may be enough to show people where they are going.
An example of this may be:
http://google.com. Anchor text can be useful in reducing the unsightly appearance of a hyperlink into an easy to read and better looking link. An example of this is MSNBCrather than “http://en:MSNBC.com/headline news/main_page”.
Anchor text in backlinks can increase your search engine relevancy because the text contains relevant words to the landing page.
Authority Backlinks
Authority websites are websites that already have the respect and trust of search engines.
This means they contain quality content and receive a large amount of traffic. Authority websites will get more visibility from search engines than other sites and will appear in higher rankings.
Getting a backlink to your website from a highly respected authority website will instantly raise your relevancy rating on search engines. It can also raise your website’s trust level in the eyes of the search engines.
Websites may have two kinds of links, Do-Follow and No-Follow links. No-Follow links do not lead to anywhere and are useless for backlinking. Always use Do-Follow links in your backlinking tactics.
Resource Links
Resource links, often simply called links, are hyperlinks from one website to another.
Resource links are used because one website considers the other’s content to be valuable to it. These links have to be relevant to the other website to be considered by search engines. They cannot fall under the category of free-for-all linking or over-linking, where websites attempt to create as many hyperlinks as possible. Search engines will not rank websites with non-relevant links.
Other Backlinks
There are other places that you can incorporate backlinks.
One example is forum signature linking. This technique is very useful for developing a good number of backlinks to your website.
It utilizes discussion forums that have outbound hyperlinks to relevant websites. This is especially useful with forums that discuss topics related to your website’s niche. Again, these forum links have to be considered Do-Follow links in order for this technique to work.
Another place to create links is on other people’s blog comments. Certain blogging sites allow people to place content in the comments section with Do-Follow links. Do-Follow links can lead people who find your blog comments to be interesting to your website and can result in a higher ranking on SERPs.
Finding Backlinks for Your Website
The more good backlinks you can attach to your website- the higher ranking your will receive from search engines.
Finding good quality backlinks can be a little tricky, but there are several ways to go about it.
Here are a few examples of where you can locate backlinks for your website:
Backlinking to a high authority site
Getting a backlink from a reputable website may be tricky. One way to do this is to create a webpage that has valuable and useful content on it and submit it to a high authority page. This can be performed by e-mailing the webmaster of an authority page and giving them a brief outline of why your page is useful and how it would benefit the people who link to it. To attempt to earn a spot within an authority websites inner pages, you can also write articles or blogs and resister with the authority website to list them. These articles or blogs will contain your links. To be successful in this make sure that:
1. You are providing quality and useful content that people will want to read
You create buzz about your site. This can be done by writing controversial blogs, writing original and useful content or by participating in community and social websites by providing useful information.
However you manage to insert backlinks to your website through the inner pages of high authority sites, doing so will increase your likelihood of showing up in the higher rankings of search engines.
Blogging
Blogging is another way to create backlinks. By writing about an interesting topic, sharing your opinions on a controversial topic or providing valuable advice in a specific niche, you can receive attention from other bloggers and websites. You can write to another blogger and ask them to link to your website as well.
Blog Commenting
Some people will leave comments on other people’s blogs that contain a backlink to their website. This technique can be effective as long as the blogger or website allows Do-Follow links to be listed in their comments sections.
Forums
Discussing interesting content in niche specific forums can create buzz about your webpage and may allow you to create backlinks to your website.
Automated link placement
Automated link placement relies on automated systems to place your links into someone else’s website in exchange for placing other links on yours. This is not considered spamming if the automated system only places your website’s backlinks on other topic-relevant sites. The links are also not reciprocal.
Reciprocal link exchange
Reciprocal link exchange involves contacting a webmaster with a webpage that is useful or relevant to your webpage and asking them to list your page as a backlink in exchange for listing theirs. This can be accomplished researching other businesses that are similar to yours but are not in competition with you and e-mailing the webmaster of that page.
Purchasing backlinks
There are many directories and submission companies that can offer you the ability to be backlinked by many websites, including authority websites. The cost effectiveness of this strategy is determined by how much more business you feel your website will have with more backlinks. It is very possible to develop backlinks without paying for them.
Social networking
Social networking sites allow different internet users to interact with one another. Many of these sites allow you to promote content and add backlinks to their pages. Avoid backlinking with social networking sites too frequently as this may lead to negative repercussions.
Article Submission
There are other ways that you can get search engines to recognize your business’s website using Off-Page Leverage SEO tactics.
One of these is article submission. You can use relevant article content to bring people to your website through backlinks. This not only raises your website’s relevancy in the eyes of search engines, but it also increases your company’s visibility within its genre and makes your business an authority in its niche.
The best way to use articles to accomplish these tasks is to use article submission directories.
Article submission directories are websites that allow anyone to write and submit articles on any topic so that they can be read by anyone who may be interested in them. These directories are popular for people looking to find information on a specific topic.
They can also be used very effectively to get people to visit your website.
There are several ways in which writing or purchasing quality articles that are relevant to your type of business can help you improve your SERP ranking.
First, you can include a series of links that can be listed in or under the article within the article directory that refer the viewer directly to your web site.
This means that you can write an article on a specific topic or product, and then give people access to the webpage where they may want to purchase the product at the same time. This is a great way to market your product effectively and get your company website to show up on search engine results. Each article can contain a resource box, which is full of information about the company, your website and a backlink to your website.
The more PR and backlinks to your website that appear in various locations on the internet, the more likely it is that a search engine will pick up these links and list your page higher.
You can also establish your small business and your website as an expert in the industry. By providing the reader with valuable information on the product or trade, you can increase your reputation as a quality seller.
These articles can also help your SEO campaign goals through the use of keywords. Articles written by you and submitted to directories can be full of rich keywords. This means that when a person types these keywords into a search engine, your article (which also contains links to your website and material that directs customers towards your website) will show up in the search engine results.
Article submissions can be a very valuable part of any SEO campaign, but it is recommended that your articles follow specific guidelines. This is because there are literally hundreds of thousands of articles available on the internet about any topic imaginable.
Here are tips to follow when submitting articles for SEO purposes:
Use only high quality writings. Quality, targeted and relevant articles will work best because they provide customers with useful information, therefore bringing in more of them, and will provide search engines with new material to rank. Keep your material fresh and new.
Use URL keywords that are considered to be search engine friendly. This means using URL names that use relevant keywords instead of generic descriptions.
Use a unique and relevant title. Not only will it help you appear in more search engine results based on the keywords used, but if viewers find your title to be intriguing enough, they will click on the hyperlink that will take them directly to your page.
The more headings and subheadings that you use the more keywords that search engine crawlers can pick up on. This means more traffic is generated. Headings and subheadings also help keep the reader interested.
By interlinking your website to other websites using links located within your articles will also increase your SERP ranking. This allows search engine crawlers to locate more links and relevant keywords to your page
Social Bookmarking
Social media is extremely popular with today’s online users. Social bookmarking is used by thousands of online users each day.
It allows internet users to share, search for and organize web resources that they enjoy by cataloging their bookmarks. Internet users can save links to webpages and share them with other people through private and public networks.
Links to the resource are shared, not the resource itself.
These are found within a social bookmarking site, where people can search for specific keyword sites. Many people will add Meta tags to a link, meaning they add descriptions or comments about the resource so that people will understand the content without having to download it first. This can help people spread content they like by adding a popular tag to it.
Social bookmarking is a great way for people to share webpages and content with one another.
It is also a good way to get more links onto the internet so that search engine crawlers can pick them up. This means it can generate more traffic to your site and result in a higher SERP ranking. It can also be used to receive high quality backlinks that can direct more traffic to your site.
Social bookmarking can be helpful in your small business’s SEO campaign:
By targeting specific traffic to your site. The tags connected to your site will be picked by people searching for those specific tags. That means people searching for products in your niche will find you faster
By allowing your website to draw off of the authority these websites have and place your site higher in the rankings. These social bookmarking sites are also reached by search engines much faster than other sites.
Social bookmarking allows you to use unlimited keyword links to your site. This will result in more hits by search engine crawlers and a higher ranking.
The major drawback to using social networking is the time it takes to update your website on the social bookmarking sites. It is easy to sign up for an account to one of these social bookmarking sites, but you have to take the time to add your keywords, metadata, tags and URL.
If you are planning on signing up for only a few social bookmarking sites, this can be accomplished manually. But if you are running many websites on many social networking sites it may be wise to use social bookmarking software to increase the speed of the entire process.
Be wary of software that uses multiple accounts from the same ip address or programs that use duplicate tags, as these will be considered as spam and will get your site removed from the social bookmarking sites.
Press Releases
Press releases are one of the most economical ways to increase your website’s online presence.
Press releases are written articles that inform readers news about your website. This could be new products available, sales, new information about your company or anything else that you would want your customers to know about.
Press releases serve to increase your presence to both your customers and to search engine crawlers.
When written correctly, with interesting and informative content mixed with search engine optimized keywords, press releases can dramatically increase the traffic to your website. They can also get more SEO keywords and links directed to your site out there, resulting in a higher search engine ranking.
Writing a successful press release starts with getting your keywords properly placed in the beginning of the release, as well as in the title and headings, in order to pick up more search engine traffic. This will also provide you with even more backlinks to your website.
You can also use online press releases to get your keywords and links onto Google and Yahoo news. Online press releases are much different from older traditional press releases as they can contain text, pictures, videos, audios and even user-generated content.
Locating the best press release directories is not hard to do.
You may have to pay a fee in order to use these directories. Try to get your press release into as many directories as possible in order to increase your search engine awareness. There are many companies that can provide you with automated press release forms and access to the more than 90 press release directories out there. These companies save you time and effort and can hook you up will the largest possible amount of directories.
Or you can submit your press releases to online PR firms for free or cheaply if you want to take the time to fill them out independently.
Link Wheels
Link wheels have been growing in popularity as a tool to increase a website’s visibility over the internet and to reach higher rankings on search engines.
The term 2.0 Link Wheel refers to the new kind of second generation websites that allow viewers to interact and collaborate with one another on the creation of a website’s content.
In the past, one person generated website content and other people viewed this site passively. 2.0 websites are now designed so that multiple viewers can contribute to the content and design of the site. Examples of 2.0 websites are social networking sites, web applications sites, hosted service sites, video-sharing sites and blogs, just to name a few.
A link wheel is a tool designed to increase the number of backlinks to your webpage, which in turn will increase your SERP ranking.
A link wheel is essentially a series of 2.0 websites that are linked together to make a wheel and redirect traffic back to your website.
There are both closed linked wheels and open link wheels.
Closed wheels are easily detected by search engine algorithms and may not work as well as an open system. An open system is when you connect the links from many different web 2.0 sites to other sites and your site without linking back to the first part of the wheel.
To build a link wheel, first you get an article or blog or however you plan to market your topic onto a 2.0 site such as a social media site. Then you include a backlink to your website in the topic. Then you include a blog on a blogging site and include a backlink to your social networking post.
Eventually you will create a new article about your topic for a hosted service site and include a link back to your blogging site entry. This creates a wheel or series of 2.0 websites that you have written entries in. This process works to create a large number of links that all can be picked up by search engine crawlers, which will result in a higher search engine ranking.
SEO Consultants
SEO consultant companies serve to take the guesswork out of optimizing your website. These consultants offer advice and tools, and they stay on top of the latest trends and tactics. Their use for your website optimization will depend on the cost benefit ratio for your business.
Tips for Success
Here are some extra tips that will help with both your On-Page and Off-Page SEO Leverage techniques:
Always make sure that your website is professional in appearance, well written, filled with useful content and easy to navigate. This will make people stay and use your site more.
Remember to design your webpage for your customers with an emphasis on getting noticed by search engines, not the other way around.
Take the time to really find and utilize quality keywords.
Pay serious attention to keyword densities
Make sure your website is properly designed to handle different screen resolutions. If it is hard to view most people will simply navigate away. Also avoid using too many images and flash animations on your website as this doesn’t help your search engine ranking and may intimidate viewers.
Be careful when accepting paid advertisements to your website. These ads may have non-relevant links that a search engine will recognize as spam and could get your website removed for spamming.
Use keyword analyzing tools. These are very helpful for making sure your keywords are the best. Google AdWords Keyword Tool is a great example.
Refresh your website’s content frequently. Fresh content is better picked up by search engines. A blog is an easy way to add fresh content frequently.
Join a SEO discussion group or blog. This will put you in touch with SEO professionals who can offer you advice and updates on newer tactics.
Check out what SEO techniques your competitor’s websites are using. You can use the Google ToolBar tool available at toolbar.google.com to highlight keywords on other people’s webpages
Always use Whitehat SEO tactics. Never use BlackHat SEO tactics as they will get your website removed from search engines. These penalties can sometimes be severe enough to hurt your business.
Be flexible in your small business SEO strategy. If one technique isn’t working- then try another. The SEO game is constantly changing.