So…you’ve got your awesome new website to show the world what you have to offer…but how does your audience actually find your website among the literally millions of other websites on the World Wide Web!?
The answer is: SEO or Search Engine Optimization. But what is SEO? In short, SEO is a collection of methods used to make your website more attractive to the search engine “crawlers” that decide what websites go to the top of a search engine results page!
So, if you want to be on the first page of Google, Bing or Yahoo when someone searches for info relevant to your website, start learning some of the simple, but numerous do’s and don’ts of SEO…here’s our TOP 5 ways to help improve your websites placement online!
1) Feed the Google monster lots of keywords!
Search engines look for relevant keywords everywhere it can, even in places that your visitors can’t see! For example, when you upload an image or video to your page, make sure it’s labeled and named correctly first. If you are a pizzeria and want people to find your restaurant when they type in “thin crust pizza in New York City”, make sure the images you uploaded from your camera/phone are titled in a smart way, like “fresh-thin-crust-pizza-extra-cheese” instead of “IMG000243″…even though visitors won’t see the title of the image on your server, automated search engine crawlers DO see it, and even they know that no one is searching the Internet for anything called “IMG000243” 😉
WordPress also makes it very easy to create the “alt tags” and “description” for your images, which add great SEO! Most people don’t think to type a sentence or two description for every image they upload online, that most people won’t even read, but it’s a perfect place to add several keywords for Google to find and give you credit for.
2) KEEP FEEDING THE MONSTER! But don’t let him see you…
Make sure your website has relevant keywords in your pages as often as possible, but make sure not to over do it and look obvious…web crawlers are super smart and can recognize if you’re simply repeating the same keywords over and over again or placing them near other content that is not relevant! Creating new and relevant content on your website keeps visitors coming back and shows search engines you are worthy of high page rankings. A clever and common way to create new content without altering the rest of your site is to keep and write in a blog!
Setting up a blog page on your WordPress website is super easy and takes only minutes to setup and learn to use, and gives you a platform on which to talk about possibly limitless topics that are closely or even loosely relevant to your organization. If you’re that pizzeria in New York City and want to take advantage of an event in your area to draw customers to your business AND drive new traffic to your website, simply make a blog post called “New York City & Gino’s Pizzeria get ready for the Spectacular Spider-Man” and write a couple of sentences and mention that anyone who comes to the restaurant in costume on that night will get a free slice of pizza! Now, there’s a chance that people online searching for Spider-man movie tickets in NYC might also see your website because you’ve hit 2 out of 3 keywords and Google happened to place you near the top of their search! So, with one simple blog post. you’ve added some sweet new keywords permanently to your website to help increase traffic, and maybe even generated some actual new physical customers with your mini marketing campaign!
*BRAINY BEAVER BONUS TIP!* If you decide to start a simple blog to help increase traffic to your site, you may as well sign up for some free social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter & Instagram, and publish that same blog post on as many of them as you can! Social Media is the most popular and trendy way to share information and explore new places, and with amazing apps like Hootsuite you can post to ALL of your social media apps & your website with a single click! Feel free to read our full article on the basics of Social Media Marketing…
www.brainybeaver.com/intro-to-social-media-marketing
3) Make your text Google-friendly.
Another common method is to make sure any links on your page are written out and not shortened, because search engines highly value hyperlink text! For example, never use the shortened “CLICK HERE” term with the link attached to it! Rather, type it out completely, perhaps as “please visit
www.yoursite.com/coupons“. It may be tempting to use the more concise shortcut link but it won’t help your SEO one bit. This same rule also applies to the permalinks, or actual URL titles of your pages. Trying not to have any random characters (?,!,#,@, etc.) or nonsensical words in the names of your pages. They should be simple and obvious, such as “
www.yoursite.com/about-us” or “
www.yoursite.com/contact“.
4) Declare your Presence and ask to be Ranked.
Submit your sitemap to Google & Bing.
Your website’s sitemap is a page that has an index list of all the pages and sub-pages on your website. By submitting this page to the major search engines it declares officially that you want to be recognized and ranked! If you need help creating your sitemap or submitting it to the search engines, just contact Brainy Beaver and we’ll help you get the job done!
5) Show Google you’ll be around for years to come.
Register your Domain name for longer than one year. One of the new parameters that Google searches for is how long a website’s domain name is registered for. This is because Google wants to put at the top of its pages not only the most relevant websites, but the ones that will be reliable and available for longer periods of time! If you Google sees that your website is registered for five years or more, it feels more secure that your site will be up and available for its users in the future…and since most domain names cost only $15/year it’s a small, but effective investment!
