Ten top tips to optimise your website
You will read these types of articles everywhere but it is always good to read as many as you can, you never know when you will find something new and helpful!
- Link building is key, reciprocal as well as one way back links, everyone seems to almost sneer at reciprocal links but they can generate just as much (if not more traffic) than one way links, the main difference is that Google does not give them as much credibility anymore. There are a number of ways to do this and they are all time consuming (sorry). A tip to get started is to pick out 2 or 3 competitor website and find out who is linking to them, this will help you in determining potential links for your website.
- Original Content, if it is interesting and new then people will link to it anywhere simply because they want to be associated with that they believe is an expert in the area. If your copy is boring, unoriginal or difficult to read it will be unlikely that many people will link to your site as it simply offers now benefit. Google (and other search engines) will also penalise you for copied content and you will find that you will not rank that highly in organic searches.
- Sitemaps, these are handy for two reasons , a sitemap will not only inform the search engine of what pages are where but also it will assist a user who might become lost on your site or unable to find what they are looking for.
- Title Tags – these are one of, if not the most important tag on your website page, stop now have a look at your and enter them into Google exactly how they appear on your webpage, does your website appear on the front page? If the answer is yes you can now imagine the power they have and it is just a matter of harnessing it. Keywords themselves are incredibly difficult to optimise for and as people’s searches become more developed they are becoming more accurate with what they are searching for i.e. key phrases. You can check this with software such as keyword tracking or overture. Get this right and you are well on your way!
- Meta Tags and descriptions, some people will argue the irrelevance of even bothering with these but other search engines still use them and any traffic is a bonus so why rule out this traffic when you have done most of the research anyway and I think it demonstrates a well structured site.
- Start a blog, this can be quite time consuming but very beneficial, adding up to date current content that will frequently be indexed by Google can only be a positive, ensure that your blog posts link to your site and that you have RSS feeds set up. If you outsource this if you have the budget.
- Social Networking, depending on the site and the nature of your business this can produce untold amounts of traffic to your website. Sites such as Twitter and Face Book are all free to join and should be taken advantage of; we have a twitter account and are currently working on our Face book page. At the minute we have around 400 followers (and rising) so every time we ‘tweet’ our followers will be able to see it, how good is that and completely free!
- Adding comments, rate my page is a bonus, by asking visitors to comment and rate your webpage you are actually getting original relevant content for absolutely nothing and will only boost your search position. There are a number of free products you can use but be sure you have some method of verification, there is nothing worse then seeing large amounts of spam ruin your website. Try Google friend, this allows you to use your Yahoo, Twitter or Google ID and thus prevent any form of Spam.
- Keep updating your website, new and regular content will only strengthen your search engine ranking position (SERP). Google among others is focusing on real time news, you may of seen Twitter feeds at the top of searches in particular areas, so the regularly you update your website the more Google will index it (in theory).
- Do nothing at all! Sound strange? Search engine algorithms are updated on a regular basis if for some reason your website isn’t showing do not panic, give it a couple of days while the search engine regains its normal momentum before making changes as they could potentially be more damaging than just leaving your website alone.
Well that’s it, good luck and please any tips or feedback please leave a comment at the bottom.
