There are many facets of your website’s design and Online Marketing that will contribute to how successful you are in achieving a high Search Engine Placement. The most far reaching methods for achieving your goal are what we refer to as “off page” methods, these will typically require the assistance of a Website Optimization Company. However, at this time we shall deal with a few of the “on-page” modifications that most website owners can easily implement to make a difference in improving search engine placement.
For any website to achieve its aims (at least in the sense of attracting visitors who want to be there), the site needs to be categorised by the search engines on the keyphrases that searchers are likely to use when tring to find a site like yours. There would be little point in your business being listed in the yellow pages under “Delivery Companies” if what you actually do is Floristry. No one is going to find you when they look in the directory. Things are very similar on the web but without the strict categorisation of Yellow Pages to guide you. Let’s consider our Florist again.
If our beautifully designed floristry website talked consistently about “spring blooms” within its text, it may well be indexed by Google etc. under the ”category” Spring Blooms. All fine and dandy… provided of course that searchers type the phrase “spring blooms” into the search box. If however, they search for “Florist”, it’s quite likely our beautiful floristry website probably won’t be listed in the results. The point is, if you want people to find your website, it really does have to be indexed correctly for you to have any chance of achieving a reasonable Search Engine Placement. The search engines will of course do that for you, but you do have to give them a lead. At a very basic level, if you think potential customers for your service will look for “florist in Bradford” then make sure you have that phrase prominent in your website.
To take that concept a little further, think of a whole range of search terms (or Keywords) that you think people would use when trying to find a website such as yours and include them in your site pages, taking care to ensure that the site retains its readability. Bear in mind here that by just adding keywords and phrases on your site certainly will never guarantee that you’ll be found, but with any luck you should be categorised correctly by the search engines. Whether you’ll be found during a search will rely on a number of factors including how much competition you have and how highly ranked your site is with those search engines. To make improvements to your ranking for various keywords, you’ll probably need to enlist the assistance of a Website Optimization Companywho can help you devisea full Online Marketing plan.
Once you’ve decided on the most beneficial keywords and phrases that search engine users will be looking for, try separating these into associated groups. Our Florist, for example might group together Valentines (Valentine Flowers, Valentine Roses, Valentine Gifts, Valentine Flowers Bradford), Occasions (Birthday Flowers, Anniversary Flowers, Thank You Gifts, Occasions Flowers Bradford) Funeral (Funeral Flowers, Funeral Sprays, Funeral Wreaths, Funeral Flowers Bradford) etc. etc. On the website, our florist would now ideally have three separate pages, one each for Valentines, Occasions and Funerals. Within the Valentines page text would now be mentioned the key phrases Valentine Flowers, Valentine Roses, Valentine Gifts and Valentine Flowers Bradford and so on. I’m sure you can see how this could be applied to most websites.
By adopting this approach, when the search engine reviews (or crawls) your site, as it will do on a regular basis, it should categorise each of your pages according to the content and title, provided that it all appears to match. In so doing, our florist should now have a chance of being listed in a search for “Valentines”. Obviously, it is a long way from here to getting a front page Search Engine Placement, but at least you’ve made some inroads.
Apart from getting your keywords right, you’ll need to ensure that you (or your web designer) observe a few simple rules to ensure that each of your web pages is given its best possible chance with the search engine. Make sure that every page is titled using the chosen keyword (e.g. Valentines.htm), has a unique title which includes a keyword and describes the page succinctly (e.g. Valentines Flowers, Roses and Gifts); then ensure that your chosen keywords are each used as
headings on the page (don’t worry; your web designer will know what to do
.
Following these few simple rules will give your Online Marketing a work to achieve a better Search Engine Placement; but remember, to get listed on page one of Google and other search engines, you’ll probably need the help of a Search engine optimization company.
