When it comes to building a business and bringing in leads, there's no better way to accomplish this than your Web site. More and more companies are slashing their budgets for traditional advertising and focusing on their online marketing efforts instead. After all, there are numerous stats that show the significance of this shift – as much as 90% of all purchases begin with a keyword search. This just highlights the critical importance of implementing a search engine (SEO) optimization strategy in order to attract the right visitors to your site.
An SEO campaign begins with a thorough review of your Web site and content along with an evaluation of your competitors’ sites. During this review, you are looking to determine the best keywords that people will enter into a search engine in order to find the product or service that you offer. This is an in-depth review as you are looking to find the actual terms that people will use instead of the terms you think they should enter.
During this review, you should also take an objective look at the content on your site. Are your Web pages written in a way that makes your company seem like an expert in your field? If you offer a service, do you include your own articles on the site to build yourselves up as a leader? If you sell products, do you enable people to leave reviews? This is just the initial step but it begins to lay the foundation for revising your content as part of your SEO strategy to bring in more visitors.
This critical review will lead to several surprises. For example, many companies spend thousands and thousands of dollars on an outside firm to create their Web site only to realize that something as simple as the metatags weren’t coded properly. Each page on your site should target a specific keyword, so repeating your company’s name in the title of the page makes no sense. Most likely, your name is in the Web address anyway so the search engines will easily find it. Also keep in mind that most people won’t be searching for your company name; they’ll be entering keywords that describe a product or service. And if your site is optimized, it will come up on the first page of results.
If you’re a beginner to SEO, don’t fear. To view the metatags on your site, click View on your Web browser, and then click Source. This will display the source code for your Web page. Below is an example of a metatag from a firm offering copywriting services:
The title tag displays the title of the page on your Web browser. The keywords are intended to provide search engines with a list of the important terms on the page. The description typically appears in the search engine results to show what content is on the Web page.
Now while you’re going through the content on your Web pages, also make sure you view the source code and take a look at your metatags. 90% of the time, you’ll find these aren’t optimized. The good news is that this is an easy place to start revising your site as part of your SEO program. Keep in mind that your review will take time and there’s a lot that goes into it. Here’s a brief checklist to look for as you go through the Web pages:
- Are the metatags optimized?
- Is it easy for a visitor to find the contact information?
- Is your Web site too graphic-intensive so it takes too long to load?
- Do you have alt tags on your images?
- Do you present useful content on each page?
- Would someone visiting your site consider the content informative and helpful?
- Are there a lot of Flash movies on your site? These are not found by search engines and can take a long time to run.
- Do you have information about your company including its history, mission statement, management team, and locations?
- Are you offering a lot of content about the field that you’re in?
- Do you include a blog so you can easily connect with visitors and enhance your rankings?
These are just a few items to consider during your review. Feel free to email me any questions to cabramson@seohutnj.com as you begin the process.
http://www.examiner.com/x-16921-Newark-Internet-Business-Examiner~y2009m7d14-Your-SEO-strategy-should-begin-with-a-thorough-review-of-your-Web-site
0 Comments