SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.

Many website owners are regularly approached by scamming companies offering, “guaranteed top results” or “submission to 100,000 directories and search engines”. It is understandable that many of these site owners fall prey to these kinds of scammers, after all, who doesn’t want to have their site ranked highly among the search engines? I do want to point out that not all companies that are SEO consultants are scammers, there are many reputable businesses that offer these services however my advice is to do your homework on these companies before committing to anything, no matter how good their promises sound.

---

 

SEO is a Process

Whether you are marketing your website yourself or having someone else market your site for you there is no shortcut that will get you where you want to go. Expect to spend a lot of time and hard work invested into your site. Also, remember patience is the key- results definitely do not come overnight.

---

The Content of Your Website

Content is not only what is going to bring visitors to your website, but it is what will keep them on your site and it is the thing that will make them return.

An important thing to know is that search engines cannot see image- they only look at text. While having pictures on your site can be stimulating to users and make a very bland page exciting it is smart to add descriptions to the images and include much more text content than images.
If you, for example, sell crafts and the only content on your site is your product then the only reason someone would visit your site would be to purchase that product. However, if you sell crafts and want to help drive traffic to your site, why not include pages on your site on tips on how to create crafts, or maybe a page outlining your current craft projects. This will make your site more interesting and will keep visitors on your site longer, and even returning to your site more frequently.

It is also important to know that setting up a website and leaving it for a year, thinking you can come back and be in the top of the search engines is not very plausible. Search engines like to see new content. Add pages, articles and any other content as much as possible. Keep in mind, you never want to ‘delete’ a page. You can change content, however if you delete a page you will loose all the search engines, directories and visitors that have linked to that page. The more a search engine can see that you update your site, the more frequently it will visit your site.

---

Page Titles

The page title is one of the very first things that search engines look at when indexing your site. You can find your page title by looking at the very top of your browser.

For your home page it is very important to have a title that is not too long but has your most important keywords. For example, on our website we have: ‘Chic Cute Website Design Templates - Boutique Web Design’.  One of our most important search phrases is ‘Cute website design’ so we included it in our home page title.

For other pages of your website you want to be specific and descriptive as to what that pages contains. 

Click here to see how to change your website’s titles

---

 

META tags are pieces of information that search engines can access to help index your site, these META tags are not viewable by visitors to your site from your webpages. The two forms of META information that we focus on for SEO is the META Description and the META Keywords. Of the two, the META Description is by far the most important.

The meta description tag is intended to be a brief and concise summary of your page's content. Think of the Yahoo! directory. You see your site title followed by a brief description of your site or business. The meta description tag is designed to provide a brief description of your site which can be used by search engines or directories. When you write a meta description tag, you should limit it to 170 characters or 200 characters at most.

The meta keywords tag allows you to provide additional text for crawler-based search engines to index along with your body copy. How does this help you? Well, for most major crawlers, it doesn't. That's because most crawlers now ignore the tag. So many people waste time on their META tags when time is much better spent in creating site content and inlinks. However, taking 5 minutes to complete your META information definitely won’t hurt. For your meta keywords you should include up to 25 words or phrases, with each word or phrase separated by commas.

Click here to see where to edit your META information.

---

 

Use Search Engine Friendly URLs

Search engine friendly urls are short and human readable. An example of a search engine friendly url would be:
An example of a non-search engine friendly url would be:

Get Linked

‘Inlinks’, or links that connect to your website can help both your search engine reputability as well as bringing traffic to your website. Something to keep in mind is that the more reputable the site is that links to your site, the more it helps the reputability of your website.

There are a few different types of places where you can try and get your links posted:

Search Engines: While most search engines will usually index your site eventually, manually submitting them will help to speed up the process.

List of search engines to submit to.

 

Directories: Directories are a good way to build inlinks, they keep a list of websites in specific categories. Submitting to reputable, well ranked directories will in turn help your own sites ranking.

List of directories to submit to.

 

Relating Websites: If you know of a site that has the same visitor demographics as you target on your site it can be a smart idea to ‘link share’, or in other words approach the site owner about placing each other’s link on both the websites. This can help build your website ranking with quality traffic.

 

Through Your Users: There is no better way to spread word of your website than through your own loyal visitors. Ask your visitors to spread the word about your website and even offer rewards for this.

---

 

Track Your Results

You can track the results and statistics of your website very easily. We have found that 'Google Analytics' is the best service, offering the most accurate and abundent information. You are able to see:

How many visitors visit your site
When your site receives visitors
Where your visitors come from (what sites that are linking to your site)
Where your visitors are located (Country, State and even city)
Keywords that people are finding your visitors through

Click here for step by step directions on setting up Analytics