Before you go spending thousands of dollars hiring an SEO firm, use some of these free tips first to help improve your search engine rankings.
Chances are, if you're unhappy with where your website currently sits within the search engines, you've attempted to research different ideas as to how to improve that search engine ranking. But, like most individuals who also want to improve where their website sits in the search engines, you most likely came across information that was difficult to understand and filled with jargon to boot.
It can sometimes make someone feel as if they need a degree in rocket science just to improve where their website sits in the search engines and so they subsequently give up on the whole process.
You can take the time you need and devour all kinds of information online about how to optimize your web pages in order to get those higher rankings or you can simply take a look at a few simple items on your web pages, make some small improvements and most likely will then see higher rankings as a result.
The very first thing you need to look at is the title of your web page. Does it contain keywords or key phrases that relate to the overall topic of your website? Or does it say something like "Welcome to Company Name"? The title of your home page as well as any additional pages within your entire website need to have the keyword you are focusing on contained within your title tag.
Next, be sure that your web pages contain content. Not simply images or fancy, flashy graphics but real honest-to-goodness text and information for your site visitors. Long gone are the days when your website is nothing more than a brochure. Today you need relevant and helpful information for your visitors and it needs to be in a format that the search engines can read well; in other words, in plain text.
This does not mean that your pages have to be plain - far from it,
as a matter of fact, images help to convey your message even better. What you do need to avoid however, is a web page wrought with graphics. Keep the graphics simple and to the point but be sure that text takes precedence.
Next, be sure that you have a header on each individual web page on your site and be absolutely certain that it contains the keywords you are focusing on for that particular page. Think of each web page like a page in a newspaper. Each story has a strong headline, usually larger than the rest of the text on the page and written to entice you, as the reader to read the rest of the story. Your web page is no different. If you're savvy enough to take a look at the actual HTML code on your page, then be sure your heading is contained with "h1" tags. If you aren't sure, have your webmaster take a look and then have them make the changes accordingly.
Next, you must be absolutely certain that the text you do have on your web pages contain the keywords you are focused on for that page. For example, if you run a flower shop online and have a web page dedicated to red roses, red roses would be your keyword and then throughout your article you would make reference to the term red roses and variations thereof. It is very important that you use variations of your keyword throughout your page. If in doubt as to what words would be related, I highly suggest that you make use of a thesaurus or any of the many online tools that can pull these phrases for you.
Lastly, while you might be considering hiring a search engine optimization company to do all of your work for you, at costs of sometimes thousands of dollars a month, do some footwork yourself, implement some of these ideas and see if that doesn't help your overall web site rankings.
Kristine Wirth is a regular contributor to SlingBrain.com, a website dedicated to helping website owners optimize their sites with free search engine optimization tips and advice. You can read other information from Kristine at SlingBrain.com
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