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06.25.09 Adding Basic Optimization To Your Site Design  By
Patrick Hare
There are multiple places online to get tips for SEO. In fact, some sites pride themselves in giving up to 55 different tips on aspects of search engine optimization. If you're new to the game, or just a small business looking to build SEO into your website, these tips can be overwhelming and jargon heavy. Here are a few basic optimization tips for the casual web designer. • Don't just copy other people's metatags. This was the preferred "poor man's SEO" practice for a long time. Sites would grab the top titles, keywords, and descriptions, make a few minor edits, and publish. This was based on the fallacy that on-page optimization was the source of search engine ranking. You should make your site relevant to today's search demand, not a copy of a copy of a site that was somewhere 5 years ago. • Find out the best keywords by using the Google Keyword Tool. Look at the "related keywords" list to see if people are typing in synonyms or are looking for a specific service that you can provide. • Make every page title unique. Page titles are the key to how a search engine will rank the site. There are many other factors, but sometimes you can get great results on an existing site just by changing the title. • The home page title should cover the broadest possible topic matter, and interior pages should be more specific. A roofing contractor in Phoenix would start with a homepage title containing "Phoenix Roofing Contractor" and interior pages would have things like "Flat Roofs" and "Leaky Roof Repair" as topics. • Each major page should have at least 250 words of readable content. "Readable" means that you can read it out loud without sounding repetitive. Even though there are plenty of ranking pages with less than 250 words, they usually have other factors in play. • Put your site up now, submit it to search engines, and get links to it. After that you can add pages. In many cases people are afraid to launch a site because they are afraid that thousands of visitors are going to stop by and notice that the site is not perfect. This is not going to happen. Search engines need time to index your site, and traffic is going to go from zero to trickle in about 2 months, so you need to get the ball rolling right away.
• Follow Google's Guidelines, Install Webmaster Tools, and Install Analytics. These tools are powerful and free. Sometimes people are afraid to give Google so much information about site traffic, but Google pretty much already knows, so you might as well be a part of the intelligence gathering. • Compare advice from different "SEO Experts" and ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask one optimization expert about the claims, advice, or techniques of another, without naming names. Nobody has a special relationship with Google, and if anyone says they have a proprietary or secret technique, it is probably not as good as the transparent one sold by reputable agencies. Agencies similar to Web.com Search Agency may not have esoteric SEO knowledge, but they do have experience in working with hundreds of sites, plus proprietary tools that make agency-based optimization much cheaper and less risky than DIY SEO. Search engine optimization firms can help you get started with basic SEO and usually are able to offer products like link building, site optimization, and content writing which are above the skill level of the average webmaster. In fact, we have a network of webmasters that partner with us to provide SEO services during the site creation or redesign process. We have even had many site designers hire us to work on an optimization project for them so they could learn the basics of SEO and then build it into their own sites. The educational value of hiring an optimization firm can be very high as long as it involves clear account management and reporting. It is also very profitable for the SEO firm, since knowledgeable customers renew their contracts as their online business becomes more profitable, and they need to spend more time on making sales than maintaining their own SEO. Comments About the Author: Patrick Hare has been managing online and offline marketing projects since 1999. From 2005 to present, he has been with Scottsdale Arizona's Web.com Search Agency (formerly Submitawebsite). Patrick provides Search Engine Optimization and Marketing advice to in-house customers and Web.com Jacksonville’s web design group. |
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