You’ve heard all the buzz around search engine optimization (SEO), but what does it mean for your company and your website?
As long as people are going online to research the products they want to buy and where to buy them, you’ll need to be sure your business is visible to them. So here’s some advice on optimizing your website to be seen by search engines like Google and Bing.
1. Pay attention to search engine keywords in your website analytics. These are the terms that you know for sure people are entering in Google and Bing to find you. These keywords can give you insight into the content and products that people really want.
2. Carefully craft your title tags. Title tags (headlines on story pages and blog posts) are the most important piece of data for search engines. Look closely at the title tags on your website’s pages. Do they use keywords and describe what is on the page? And more importantly, do they use search terms that your users are searching for?
Are you using words someone might use to search and find your post or article? Put yourself in the searcher’s shoes and consider what they would type into Google if they were looking for your information.
3. Use the Google Keyword Tool to find more good keywords. Even if you don’t use Google AdWords as an advertising vehicle, you can use the Google Keyword tool, which shows the relative importance of keywords based on Google AdWord sales. Look for words and phrases that have high local monthly searches and low to medium competition.
But don’t just go for the words with the most searches — it’s about quality and relevance to your business.
4. Populate the meta description in your website’s code. Meta descriptions are used by search engines to populate search results pages. This snippet of code needs to concisely and quickly tell the user what your site is all about. Talk to your site designer for details on how to do this for your website.
5. Improve your URLs. If you can change them, use URLs that use keywords from your page or article. For example, www.gardencenter.com/gardentips/organic-gardening-advice.htm instead of www.gardencenter.com/category2/article00389575.htm
6. Get your Google+ page going. You may not have noticed, but results from Google+ posts are now included in Google search results, along with a photo of the author of the post. If your customers have connected to your brand on Google+, it may mean you’ll come up more often and at a higher position when they perform a search on Google.