5 Helpful Search Engine Optimization Tips
If you look at keyword results on Google, you will see more than just website returns. You will see social media sites (especially now with Google+ taking off), online local search directories, videos, and images. Old search engine optimization tricks of yesterday are no longer working. As changes in search engine optimization occur, your strategy must adapt with it or risk being left out in the cold. If you’re not adapting your search engine optimization strategy to keep up high in the search engines, your competition is, and they will be taking your future customers. With that in mind, here are 5 helpful tips for search engine optimization.
Tips for Search Engine Optimization | #1- Get Local
Using online local search directories is one of the most overlooked aspects of search engine optimization. This oversight is amazing because it is both simple and free to utilize. Every business should have their complete listings on the following sites: Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Business Portal, AOL Yellowpages, Manta, and Yelp. Since Google is the most used search engine, having a complete listing for Google Places is paramount for a successful search engine optimization campaign. Top Google Places listings wind up on page 1 of Google, right under the paid ads. This means that businesses that spend the time on entering their information on numerous online local search directories will get on page 1 of Google without having to pay hundreds of dollars per day for paid advertising. Plus, studies show that users look at Google Places results more so than paid advertising. Therefore, utilizing online local search directories as part of your search engine optimization plan just makes good sense.
Tips for Search Engine Optimization | #2- Get Social
Search engine optimization has merged with social media to form social media optimization. The concept behind social media optimization is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines, and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs and videos. According to Michael Steizner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report, an unexpected benefit of social media optimization was a rise in search engine rankings reported by more than half of participants. As the search engine rankings improve, so will business exposure, lead generation efforts, and a reduction in overall marketing expenses. About one in two marketers found social media marketing generated qualified leads. Social cues such as Twitter shares, Facebook likes and social bookmarking heavily influence search rankings. Essentially, search results are personalized for each person.
Tips for Search Engine Optimization | #3- Get Human
Too many sites base their search engine optimization plan around trying to please the Google bots that visit the site. If there’s one thing that Google Spam Buster Matt Cutts has taught us is that you will avoid the Google slap if you design your site to please the end user. After all, that’s the goal of their Google Panda updates; to create a search engine that answers its users questions quickly and efficiently. So how do you create a site to benefit humans? Here are some tips:
- Avoid keyword over utilization
- Write beneficial content
- Design your content to provide tips or answer a question
- Use headers and pictures to break up the monotany
- Bullet points are good as well
Google isn’t stupid and knows when you are spamming your own site with keywords. Plus, you will cause people to quickly leave your site, increasing your ‘bounce rate’. The easiest solution is to put out relevant, quality content. If you please the reader, you will please the Google Bots.
Tips for Search Engine Optimization | #4- Get Backlinks
A backlink is simply any link received by a web page, directory, website, or top level domain from another web node. The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (for example, this is used by Google to determine the PageRank of a webpage). Backlinks are an important part of search engine optimization because Google has two main factors in determining their search rankings: relevance and trust. Since Google is in the search engine business, it wants to make sure that its customers searches are rewarded with original, useful, relevant, and quality content rather than sales garbleygook designed to cheat Google AdSense for revenue dollars. Therefore, if your website links are present on other websites with high page rank, then Google will rank you higher as well. Think of backlinks as recommendations, and the more recommendations you get from highly valued sites, the more likely Google will be to recommend your site on its search engine.
Tips for Search Engine Optimization | #5- Get a Sitemap
A Site Map is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchial fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site. Remember the easier it is for people to navigate to your site, the easier it is for bots to do the same thing. Sitemaps show the search engines how your site is setup and makes it easier for them to crawl, which gives big points for your and your website.
In conclusion, the days of stuffing a website with a bunch of keywords simply to get ranked highly in Google to profit from Adwords is over. If you want to have a beneficial search engine optimization program, then all you have to do is create a site that would please the average person and you’ll be fine.