Improving the search engine ranking of your business website...

When it comes to ensuring that your business ranks well on search engines and therefore gets decent amounts of traffic, working out how to do this can seem bewildering.

It has been well commented by members here that there is more advise out there on what is known as "SEO" or search engine optimisation than pretty much anything else. This can lead to a great deal of confusion as there are many conflicting opinions and stories out there.

No-one apart from google know their algorithm and perhaps not even any single person understands all parts of it, as no doubt there are a huge number of factors that are taken into account to a greater or lesser extent. This means that it is not worth even thinking about exactly how it works, but rather sticking to common sense things that have been proven time and time again to work. And just what are they?

Well, having good quality content on your website that is unique to your website is a crucial factor. Ensure that content is updated regularly. Grow your site gradually over time with good quality, interesting and relevant content.

But what about the content of all that content? Well, in order for people to reach your site through a search engine they have to search for something. It's an obvious point, but worth considering. You need to work out what searches you want to have your site listed for.

You then need to ensure that you have content that matches those searches, and ensure that the relevant content page(s) that you want to match against those search terms mention that term a few times in the body content of the page. But it has to be done naturally and not over the top. If you are finding yourself including a "keyword" just for the sake of it or to make up the numbers, then something is going wrong.

You should also ensure that you write specific title tags and meta description tags for each and every page of your website, that details precisely the content on the page. Ensure that it lists the content that really is on the page, and not anything else. The best way to turn away visitors is to mislead them to the contents of your site through mis-using these tags. Remember that you want to drive traffic to your website, but once they are there they need to find content that matches their search else they are likely to leave straight away and never come back.

Questions

Have you found it hard to increase traffic levels to your site, or even given up?

What tips and techniques have you used to help increase traffic to your site?

Do you have any questions or confusion as to how to increase the traffic to your business website?
__________________
Web Design

Re : Improving the search engine ranking of your business website

The whole search engine thing is a bit of a mystery.

It sounds simple when outlined like above, but I know that it takes lots of hard work. But then I suppose everything in life takes hard work!

Re : Improving the search engine ranking of your business website

Hi Dan thanks for useful information.
Patience is the key...here.
__________________
http://www.alexbaxter.co.uk/

Re : Improving the search engine ranking of your business website

I like the calm colours of your website Millie... I think you could do with more content to help the search engines out and give them more stuff to index

Re : Improving the search engine ranking of your business website

Hi Lianne
Thanks,
Ya you are right I have to update my content and other subpages also.
__________________
http://www.alexbaxter.co.uk/

Re : Improving the search engine ranking of your business website

A lot of people make doing well in search engines seem like a mystery.

But it is just common sense:

1) Write good quality content

2) Make that content original

3) Ensure it is relevant to your site, clear, and that each page contains information that is relevant to the title of that page and any links that point to it. Keep it to the point but long enough that there is enough content on each page for search engines to know what the page is about and index it accordingly

4) Keep content updated on a regular basis to encourage repeat visits and for search engines to know the site is not one of the billions of abandoned ones

Re : Improving the search engine ranking of your business website

Totally agree with the previous comments, plus here are a few more ideas.

Submit your site to various web directories and reference sites

Publicise your site to everyone with whom you communicate

Write a newsletter and send it out

Ask other high-quality websites to link to your website

Check out a site before you link back

For more info read this article too: http://startuprevolution.co.uk/businessarticles/49/improving-your-pagerank-
__________________
Paper Mountain Solutions - Delivering an extensive range of financial, administrative, sales and bespoke outsourcing solutions nationwide