Improving your Search Engine Ranking is one of the best ways to get quality targeted website traffic to your websites.
Showing up in the search results for a highly targeted keyword term on search engines is one of the most critical ways to increase targeted website traffic and expose your product or service to others who might be interested in what you have to offer. Most of the major search engines such as Google and Yahoo, etc, utilize an algorithm to determine where a website ranks in relation to other websites for specific keyword terms. These search engines have set up specific criteria and webmaster guidelines that a website must meet to get to the top 10 search results. The specific criteria are different for each and every engine, but all search engines share several commonalities. It all comes down to the type and amount of content provided on a given website, the level of keyword optimization done on the website, and the popularity of the website (link popularity/PageRank). Tailoring your website so you can improved your search engine rankings is known as search engine optimization, or SEO for short and will definitely increase website traffic.
So how can you improve your search engine optimization SEO and rank higher in the Search Engines? Well lets discuss a few things that you can do immediately.
1) Keyword Research
For this example, we are only going to discuss ranking in Google. This is the biggest and most widely used Search Engine.
Head on over to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and do some research so you can decide what search phrases you would like to show up for in the search results. This keyword tool will actually show you how many people are actually searching for any specific keyword phase, plus give you a list of terms related to your main keyword. Now before you go start trying to rank for the term “Make Money Online” or something that is highly competitive, there is something else that you need to know when choosing a good keyword to try and rank for.
For your results that you get from the Google Keyword Tool, Pick a keyword that has a Global Monthly Search Volume of 3000 or more, and has a unique competition search result of 30,000 or less. By uniqe unique competition result I mean, go do your regular Google search for the term but put your search term in “Quotes”. This will give you how many different page have that exact search term on their website. If you can find phrases that have the criteria listed above, it will be fairly easy to rank in the top 10 search results on Google.
2) Optimize your site for the main keyword and Related keywords
Don’t just think that plastering your main keyword all over your website is going to get you ranked in Google, doing this is only going to get you banned for keyword spamming. Search engines are a lot smarter today and can pick up on theses little tricks fast. If you want to get ranked for your main keyword, you need to write quality content on your site that is also optimized for the related keyword terms that Google gave you with their keyword tool.
You need to stay focused on the user that will be visiting your website. Give them good quality content to read and don’t too much time trying to please the Search Engine Spiders. Think about what your target market needs and what brought them to your website in the first place, and then put it on your site so that they can find it. The phrase “content is king” still holds true today. If you want to be relevant for specific keywords, than you need good highly competitive content. Write about 300 words or so for each keyword phrase and put it on your site every few days. On average, you should try to target between 3-5 keyword phrases per post that you make on your website. Make it as natural flowing as possible and the Search Engines will reward you with a first-page ranking.
3) Page Titles and Descriptions
Try to make sure that all the pages of your website have custom titles and descriptions related to the content of those pages. If your site is using the same tags for all your WebPages, search engines will have a hard time trying to figure out the subject or relevance of the individual pages.
4) Use Site Maps
Create a site map that shows people where different pages are that you have on your website. About 6% or more people will continue to browse your website just because of your Site Map. If you have keyword rich titles for your pages, these are going to be the links in your site map and people will click the links also, the Search Engines will love it as well.
5) Build Up Your Popularity
So now that you have found the right keyword phrases that you would like to get ranked for in the search engines, you’ve created all of the necessary content for your readers to enjoy, and you’ve also optimized all of your web pages to the best of your abilities. Congratulations – you’re now in the top 80 percent of the websites listed for the keyword phrases you decided to try to target.
Now you need to submit your website to some social bookmarking directories. Simply do a quick Google search for social bookmarking directories and submit your pages to them. In no time they will start linking to you, your pagerank will go up, and you will start seeing first page results in Google.