Why does any business have a website? To try and increase
profits. Drive people to their products or services and increase the businesses
potential client base.
The next question is this. How does a website do that if it
can’t be found? It’s all well and good to give people the link to your website
and get direct traffic that way but that only works with people you have
already met and that means that you already have the potential to turn these
people into clients. You don’t necessarily need the website (unless of course
it is the only front for your business). In order for your business to grow
online it needs to be found on Search Engines such as Google.
This is where SEO comes in. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
is the process which your website is augmented in the best way for Search
Engines to find it. If your website is higher up the list on Google then it is
far more likely that potential customers will go to your website. Obviously
being first is ideal and nowadays if you aren’t on the first page then you
don’t really have a hope of being “the chosen one” by potential customers.
SEO used to be a game. Web Developers would use meta tags to
give the site the best keywords that seem to be trending at the time, they
would hide different headings and give pictures sneaky ‘alt’ tags, all in the
hope that it would increase the all important page ranking. However, as with
everything related to the internet, SEO changed very rapidly.
There are a few ways to get your website to first position
in Google, the first and easiest? Pay for it. There are companies that will
guarantee your place on Search Engines for the small price of a few thousand
dollars per month. That being said, as soon as you stop paying? Your site drops
back into the depths of page 2 and beyond. Without paying extortionate amounts
there are a few things that can increase your page ranking and therefore your
website traffic.
Firstly, you need to find out what people would search for.
What are people looking for when you want your site to pop up? If you have a
plumping business and you just put your website online then you don’t want it
appearing when people are looking for electricians. This is where some market
research comes in handy. After you know your main keywords you can start with
that. Use the keywords within the site, make sure they are part of headings, put
them in the alt tags of images. Spam those words (reasonably) throughout your
site. But that’s all old techniques, you knew that bit right?
Modern search engines use reliability as a major factor for
page rankings. The main thing that determines reliability on the internet is
back-links. The amount of other websites that link to your website shows that
your site is trustworthy and well established.
The next point (that actually goes hand in hand with the one
above) is social media. Make a Facebook page for your business, make an
Instagram, make a Twitter account, put your business in all of the local
business directories online. Make sure your website link is on each of these
pages. This provides some back-links that you desperately need but it also
makes your website look more legitimate. Just don’t forget to keep these social
medias active. Which brings us to the next point.
You have to keep your website updated. Most search engines
analyse how often a website is updated and this has a major influence on your
sites ranking. If a website is regularly active it will appear to be more
trustworthy and maintained. It will also make sure that the content on the
website is up to date and consistent with current trends, which is extremely
important and this has a lot of weight in your websites ranking.
The last point is the most difficult. Traffic. You need
people to visit your website in order to get higher up on the page listing. If
your traffic comes from different sources then it helps more. Try to make sure
that the entry points are from a variety of search keywords. It is a bit
conflicting but you do need to drive traffic to your website before your
website and its page ranking will generate traffic for you.
The main thing is time, you can choose to pay thousands of
dollars and get your number one rank straight away or you can use some simple
techniques and a little bit of patience to achieve the same result.
Till next time
Alec.
No comments:
Post a Comment