So, you’ve noticed that the website of your competitors is ranked higher on Google for the phrase “computer equipment”, even if you are the best computer equipment store in your area.
And what will you do about that? You will use different search engine optimization techniques that work! Here are a few easy steps (like a seo tutorial) that will instantly improve your website rankings.
Here’s a ten week SEO plan that will quickly put your website on the road towards higher rankings. Follow these basic SEO strategies and techniques, and rest assured that the SEO of your site will be on a higher level.
Ten week SEO plan – Basic Search Engine Optimization Techniques
Week 1 – Verify your website on three major search engines
If you want to understand how search engine interact with your website, and figure out potential problems before they affect your traffic, you should verify your website on the three major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) and oversee your status regularly. There are some quite good SEO tools that can help you with this.
Start with registering your website on Google Webmaster Tools. That is really easy, all you have to do is open an account and verify your website by uploading a small code that will find Google on your server (there are also some other options for site verification).
Then, create an XML sitemap of your web pages and upload through your Webmaster Tools account.
The amount of information you get from Google about how this search engine interact with your website is really amazing. Once you go through that process, you will be able to check:
- How many pages Google has indexed and how often
- What mistakes Googlebot found during indexing
- Which keywords lead the search engine to your website
- How many entry links are there for each page from outer sources
- How many internal links each pages receives from other pages on your website
- How well your website is optimized for certain keywords
- How quickly your website loads
- How many broken links are on your website, where they lead…
There’s a similar process for registering on Bing Webmaster Tools. Yahoo Site Explorer has shutdown few years ago.
Week 2 – Research your keywords
It’s easy to assume because you’re selling computer equipment, your customers just type “computer equipment” into Google and find your product. But, the truth is actually that you don’t know what your customers are searching unless you look into it. They can type something like “where to buy computer equipment“. One of the biggest mistakes an online company can make in SEO is targeting the wrong keywords.
Start by creating a list of keywords. Basically, it is the collection of all the keywords and phrases of which your potential customer can type into a search engine and find your products and services. You need to get in the heads of your potential customers. Put yourself in their position for a minute and think what you would type to find a website like yours. Then distribute that list to your friends, family, customers, and let them add additional keywords they would use to find your services and products. Continue until you collect at least 50 keywords and phrases. That is your keyword list.
Now take this list and put into an online tool for researching keywords such as Keyword Discovery, Word Tracker, or even Google Keyword Tool. These tools show how many searches each keyword and phrase attracts every day. Use this information to narrow your choice. Don’t deal with keywords that bring less than 20 searches a day. Pay attention to the most popular keywords on your list and pick those that relate to the content of your website. Rearrange, improve, and rearrange again, to get to your final list of keywords.
Week 3 – Integrate your keywords into your pages (on page optimization techniques)
Despite what is widely believed, putting your keywords in meta tags isn’t enough for Google to determine that your website is relevant for your keywords. For the search engine to determine whether your website is relevant, it has to find the keyword in a visible text on your pages and the link text that leads to your website.
Take your final and improved list of keywords and place your keywords in different parts of your website. That is a pretty clear task. Usually the content of every page will point into which keywords will the simplest and easiest to integrate in the title, in the text and other content.
Now, rewrite your content to include keywords in a natural way into your pages. Try to not repeat a key phrase more than 3 or 4 times in a page. Rewrite your title, heading and META tags, alt tags and heading tags, so they contain your new keywords. When you are creating new pages, make sure you include a logical keyword in the names of files. Target no more than 3 keywords per page.
Week 4 – Create an adapted title, headings and meta tags (on page optimization techniques)
How many websites have you visited where every web page has the same META description tag? That is a big mistake. Every page on your website needs to have a different title, headings and META description tag, linked to the content of each page.
Take your new keywords and create optimized title, headings and tags for each page that you want to be indexed. This shows the search engines and visitors the thing that makes each page special.
Btw, use your META description tags only as Call-To-Action text. Google should not be your target for this. You should learn more about all on page optimization techniques to be able to do this changes in right way….in seo friendly way.
Week 5 – Install and use Google Analytics
Have you installed Google Analytics on your website? If you haven’t, do it today. Google Analytics is a free package of website statistics that give an insight into the traffic of your website and the efficiency of marketing. Maybe you already had access to some metric package thanks to your company or web designer, but it won’t be nearly as powerful or as easy to use as Google Analytics. This program allows you to see and analyze data about traffic in a new way and learn how your visitors interact with your website during a certain period of time.
Using these testing tools, you can determine whether the metrics of your website is below or above average for your industry, and you can more accurately measure the ROI of your website. Google Analytics synchronizes directly with your Google AdWords and also other PPC favors, so you can create conversion goals and follow the paths of visitors from the entry page of your website.
Week 6 – Add fresh content
What makes a search engine go back to your website? Fresh content. By regularly adding new content and new pages to your website, you are sending a signal to search engines and visitors that you have a lot to offer and that they should keep coming back. The more content you have, the more possibilities for entrance you give your visitors, and more ways of finding you through search engines. Imagine your website as a reverse pyramid, where pages with additional content secure more and more entrance at the top.
Week 7 – Check your internal link structure
A lot of webmasters spend too much time searching for outside links that lead to their website and forget about their internal link structure. The way you link your own pages can have a great influence on the ranking of those pages. That is because Google and other search engines are becoming influenced by the keywords that are used in the internal links too. This main text tells the search engines about what that page is about.
For example, if you link your page about “new laptops for sale” from your starting page, instead of placing a link that says “click here”, use something like “Read more about our new laptops for sale” using the whole sentence as a link. This signals the search engines that the page you are linking is about laptops for sale and they will probably show that page as relevant in search for new laptops for sale in their results.
Try conducting this policy on your entire website, where all your pages should be internally linked through the right text links rich with keywords. You will be surprised how much this simple search engine optimization technique does for your website.
Week 8 – Be sociable
Use social networks like Twitter and Facebook and get your content out there. If you haven’t already opened the accounts on these social networks, do it quickly.
One more search engine tip. Each time when you announce a product or add a new blog post, make sure that you put it on those social networks. It will encourage people to share your content and visit your website, which will improve your traffic and increase entrance links.
Week 9 – Create backlinks to your website (off page seo technique)
Talking about backlinks, they are key for the success of your website with search engines. The number of backlinks that lead to your pages are the main component of the algorithm Google and other search engines use to rate the relevancy of the page in searches. If page A has 5 links that lead to it using *example text* as the main text in links, while page B has 50 similar links, it is obvious that Google will pick page B as a more relevant page and rank it higher in search results.
But, remember that Google needs to trust the websites that link to your website. Make sure the links you get are seo friendly and that coming from high quality website and not spam link farms, because those backlinks can do more harm than benefits.
Week 10 – Overlook, adjust, test, change
By standing in place, nobody goes anywhere. The same goes for your website. You need to constantly oversee its functioning and how people interact with it before you can make it better. For this, Google Analytics is your best friend. Take the time in your weekly schedule to rate your analysis and pay attention to how the different search engine optimization techniques affect your website. Pay attention to all the problems that need to be addressed. Change the SEO plan based on the activity of your visitors and the pointers in keyword searches. Regularly log into your Webmaster Tools account on the two large search engines, check indexing and oversee how many pages from your sitemap are indexed.
Follow these basic SEO plan steps and search engine tips, and you’ll see the changes in your ranking results in 10 weeks. Or just ask us for search engine optimization advice. We are here for you
