Alan DraperThe sites that hold the top search engine rankings in Google receive 36.4% of the search engine traffic. Can you imagine the impact that could have on your small business? That’s optimized traffic being directed to your website to get information, become a lead and over time a long term business partner.
What if that search term had 200 searches a month? What if a different term had 8000 searches a month? What if your site was optimized for both? If you get 36.4% of that traffic then that’s an extra 2984 visitors a month to your website!
I have just pulled those search numbers out of thin air, but the statistic that 36.4% of people click the result that has top search engine rankings on Google is real. That is why internet search engine optimization is something that your small business should take very seriously.
Better search engine placement allows you to achieve top search engine rankings and tap into a new source of qualified visitors who are actively searching for your information, advice, products and services on the internet.
4 Tips to Achieve Top Search Engine Rankings.
To make your website rise to the top you need to follow these four rules.
1. Keyword Selection
The keyword phrase (a term longer than one word, for example “Professional services firms in New Jersey”) that the user will enter into the search engine is hugely important and sits at the very foundation of getting top search engine rankings.
Think about the term your ideal client will enter into the search engine when they are looking for the results that your service can provide.
Your company name and your location are good for brand awareness but it is not addressing the scores of people that don’t yet know about you.
Click on the following link To learn more about Google Key Word research
2. Keyword optimized content
In order for Google to fully understand what your content is about, it first of all sends a spider along to crawl your pages. The spider looks at pre defined areas of the page that help it translate and report back as to what the content is about.
The areas that you need to consider are;
- Page Title
- Heading
- Sub headings
- Alt tags for images
- URL of the page
All of these elements of the page are considered by the search engines when indexing your content in the correct place so that your ideal visitor can find it.
Click on the following link to learn more about the basics of SEO On Page optimization
3. Internal Linking
Internal linking is about how and where you link a page or post to other content that is relevant within your website. The point being that the search engines want to provide the user with the best possible experience they can.
Continuing with the “Professional services firms in New Jersey” search term earlier, it would be of benefit if you could then link to pages of accounting firms in New Jersey, legal firms in New Jersey, medical firms in New Jersey.
By doing this you are providing greater detail for the user which the search engines will appreciate. If the internal linking is managed correctly you will improve your search engine rankings, edging your content closer and closer to the very top search engine rankings.
4. Attracting Inbound links.
The goal here is to create highly valuable, unique, entertaining, thought provoking, controversial content that people want to talk about and share.
If your content is so good that it generates huge interest it will get shared on social media sites. People will start to like it, Google+1 it and share it on Facebook. These are referred to as search singnals, which are included in the ranking algorithm.
The more people that link back to your site signifies to the search engines the popularity and value of the piece of content and over time generating more links back to your content will result in greater SEO traffic. However, this does not mean that all links are equal; the quality and relevance of the link is highly important too.
Google takes into consideration where the link has come from. If your content is about marketing tips for small businesses and you receive a link back from Harvard Business School then that is a valuable link. If you receive a link back from Joe’s Chat Corner Blog then as complimentary as it is that you have received a link it is less relevant as it holds less authority.
Search engine optimization techniques are constantly changing. What doesn’t change, and in fact becomes more prominent, is the fact that if you invest the time creating quality content that has value with the readers on a regular basis you will soon find your site and pages getting top search engine rankings.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Alan Draper.
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The spider looks at pre defined areas of the page that help it translate and report back as to what the content is about.
content will result in greater SEO traffic. However, this does not mean that all links are equal; the quality and relevance of the link is highly important too