Increasing website visitors
This Article was posted on 04.02.11 in Growth
Search engines are the main way people locate information on the Internet. They can be a major source of traffic to your website – provided you use search engine optimisation (SEO) to ensure that search engines, and, therefore, people can find you.
What is search engine optimisation?
Websites that are highly ranked on search engine results pages receive more clicks and more traffic. The top three results get most clicks. After that, the number of clicks falls rapidly. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) makes it easier for search engines to determine the contents of a webpage and will increase your rankings for relevant key word searches. A better ranking increases the chances of people finding your website.
When you perform a search online, a large number of factors influence the order of results. Your SEO strategy should target these factors to help improve the ranking of your website. The main search engines include Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Bing. They rank sites in slightly different ways, but the basic rules apply to all of them.
SEO in a nutshell
Many websites implement the fundamental elements of SEO badly – or not at all. By following some simple guidelines, you can usually see improvements in your search rankings. Once the foundations are laid, you can continually tweak your site to see improvements.
The best SEO strategies are highly targeted. Your aim is to rank highly when people enter search terms that are relevant to your business. This makes it more likely that the people who visit your site will be interested in what you have to offer. To succeed, you need to target very specific search terms within your website.
Your SEO strategy will take time to show results – your site should climb the rankings gradually as search engines update their indexes. Three months is a reasonable period to measure results over, though new sites with poor rankings may take much longer to show significant improvement.
Choose key words
The first stage of an SEO campaign is to decide which key words or popular search terms to target. Start by selecting words and phrases highly relevant to your business. The aim of SEO is to drive relevant traffic to your site so you need to target the key words you think people interested in your business would use when typing a search query into a search engine.
Brainstorm a list of relevant key words. This exercise is best done in a group, so arrange a brainstorming session with your key staff. Think about what your business sells, and the customers you target. Make a list of any words or phrases you think might be relevant. The list might include product types and names or words that relate to your target audience.
Now narrow down your list of terms by assigning a priority to each search term you have generated. Your aim is to identify search terms that have high search volumes (lots of people enter them into search engines). You’re also looking for terms that few websites rank well for. It is easier to rank highly for these low-competition terms.
Use online tools
You can use online tools to identify the search terms with highest volumes. Useful tools include Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker and the Google keyword tool.
These tools display the number of times a chosen search term has been entered into various search engines. The figures supplied by these tools are indicative, but generally reflect the way people use search engines. These tools will also supply a list of suggested search terms that may give you further ideas about which key words to target.
Record the volume of searches for each key word or phrase using a spreadsheet. Get a feel for the amount of competition for each search term. High volume search terms often have many websites competing for the top rankings. When competition is extremely high, it may be impossible for smaller, newer websites to get near the top.
Alternatively, enter the exact search term into a search engine like Google. Search engines highlight key words in the results in bold. As a general rule, if most of the results on the first two pages contain the exact search term, the competition is high.
Build a final list of target key words, ordered by priority. Low-competition, high-volume search terms are most important. You should target these because they can send significant traffic to your site. Consider disregarding search terms with extremely high levels of competition. Instead, prioritise relevant search terms with low competition over less relevant terms with large search volumes.
Don’t disregard search terms just because they have a low volume of searches. If the terms are very relevant to what you offer, keep them on your list. Having a lower number of visitors is fine, as long as more of them buy from you.
By checking your website analytics information, you can see which target key words attract visitors to your website. You can also use it to identify new key words that you may not have thought of.
Optimise your site
Once you have a list of target search terms, you’re ready to optimise the pages on your website for these terms. Match pages on your website to the key words in your list. Aim to target two or three search terms with each page on your website.
For the next step, you might need help from a web designer or IT expert. You need to incorporate your target search terms into page metadata. The term ‘metadata’ includes the page title, description and key words.
Page titles and descriptions have a significant influence on search rankings, so try to include your key words in each. Ensure the URL of each page includes a target search term because search engines check words in the URL for relevance. For instance, if your page is about men’s trousers, you might name the page ‘mens-trousers.html’.
Work the target search terms into the text on your pages. Use the key words in a natural way, so text remains readable. Be aware that terms included in Javascript and Flash navigation can’t be read by search engine robots and will not help your SEO.
Links can increase your ranking
Internal and external links to other web pages can increase your search engine ranking. Try to build lots of links between pages on your site. Pay close attention to the linked text. Ideally, this should be the exact search term you are targeting with the linked page.
Create an XML sitemap
A quick way to build more links is to create a site map that links to every page on your site. An XML sitemap is a useful way to make sure that search engines can index all of the pages on your site. You can submit the sitemap yourself to the major search engines via their webmasters.
Link building
The single biggest factor that determines your search ranking can be links to your website from other sites because search engines like Google regard every link to your website as a vote of confidence in your site. Links from websites which themselves have a high ranking are worth the most.
Here are some tips:
- Ask loyal customers, partners and suppliers if they would be willing to link to you.
- Post comments on forums and blogs. Many forums and blogs allow you to link back to your website if you leave a comment or take part in discussions.
- Offer to contribute to other sites in return for links. For instance, offer articles on relevant subjects to high-profile websites in your industry. Ensure that articles are credited to your website, with a link back to the site.
- Submit your site for inclusion in online directories. Many online directories act as jumping off points to other websites.
- Run a company blog which contains interesting insights and debates. Including key word-relevant links in your blog posts can make these an easy way to gain links. RSS aggregators may then pick up and distribute your blog content online.
Give people a reason to link to you. The best links are usually the ones that come naturally, simply because what you offer is of value (for example, useful resources, articles or business tools).
Remember your customers
Ultimately, your website has to be designed for people, not search engines. If your website copy is so key word heavy that visitors to your site cannot understand it, they will go elsewhere. Avoid going over the top.
Search engines use very advanced methods to identify sites that try to play the system. If a term appears too often, this may actually count against you. Aim to use key words just two or three times in the body text of your page.
Make sure you link only to reputable sites. In the same way that links from recognised sites count in your favour, links from blacklisted sites count against you. Only approach sites you are familiar with and which are well-established online.
Keep it in perspective
SEO should be only one element of your online marketing strategy. Be careful not to spend too much time tweaking your site. Getting the basics right should be your main priority. If you have an interesting site with good content, then much SEO will happen naturally.
Remember that SEO rewards a long-term approach so be persistent and get help from an SEO expert if needed.
Next steps
- Meet with staff to brainstorm common words and phrases people might use in searching for your products or services, and assign a priority to each term so you can narrow down the most important term.
- Avoid high-competition terms in favour of low-competition terms that will still allow you to attract relevant visitors.
- Set targets for developing strong links with other sites.
- Monitor the results using website analytics and keep tweaking your site. Don’t expect short-term results but be persistent in learning more about SEO and giving it some time and attention.
Content provided by The Small Business Company
