One of the most perplexing problems when developing a website is how to drive traffic to the site. One very popular (and potentially extremely beneficial) strategy is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. If you get this strategy right, you are well on the way to driving significant traffic to your website. This article discusses a number of simple yet effective strategies to optimize your website.
Simple yet effective SEO tips . . .
Creating a website has become important for anyone seeking massive online exposure today. Sadly, the creation and exposure are not necessarily inter-related. Getting a top spot for your website on search engines like Google and Yahoo is as much an art as the creation of a jazzy site is - and it goes by the popular name Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
Firstly, ensure that you host your website on a 'paid for' service that isn't associated with any inappropriate or adult content so as to be banned by any search engines. Next, ensure your website is composed of quality, relevant content. In the same vein, avoid meaningless and content-less link farms like the plague. It might have worked wonders a decade ago, but ever since Google and other search bots wizened up, it is pointless. Keep your page as light as possible with minimal HTML coding and always have a site map on the home page as this makes it easier for search engine spiders to index pages other than the homepage.
Once your website is ready, take the time to submit it to a few quality directories as well as individual search engine heavyweights like Yahoo. Please remember that most search engines can take between one to three months to start showing your website in its search results. Using human reviewed directories like dmoz is particularly recommended.
At the time of url submission, you will have a chance to add meta tags to increase your websites visibility in relevant searches. The usefulness of meta tags has been long debated in SEO circles to no definite conclusion. Stuffing your website with tags is not only useless but can also be harmful since Google and others have begun to frown on this as a method of cheating users by providing not so relevant content.
However, meta tags used wisely can really boost your website's search rankings. Pay close attention to the title tag of the page, restricting it to 60 - 70 characters in length. Almost equally important is the description tag where you must summarize the website's theme in as few and interesting words that you can come up with. This is often shown as a summary on search engine results and has to be exciting enough for users to click through.
Keywords is the one area where many over-enthusiastic SEO experts can mess up. Too many misleading keywords will cause search engines to penalize you by reducing your search ranking drastically. Always, choose relevant tags and go for quality rather than quantity. A more result yielding alternative is to write quality copy with keywords inserted in the right proportion within the body text. A keyword density of 3 -5% for primary keywords and 2 -3 % for secondary keywords is ideal.
All these steps should result in a relatively high, top 20 ranking for your website within a couple of weeks. If not, re-submit your website afresh after tweaking all the above factors to make it more relevant.
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