BEFORE YOU READ THEM, HERE ARE SOME KEY TERMS YOU SHOULD KNOW
Targeted/Strategic keywords-The keywords you want your customer search to find your company. An example is “web design greenville sc” or “restaurants greer sc”
Content-What’s on your page-everything from images to text.
Sitemap-Includes all the pages you want indexed in search engines. Usually written in XML language.
Index-In this context it means all the pages that the search engine searches.
Tag-Html (or other coding language) element that surrounds specific content. Tags tell the browser, a header is a header and an image is an image. Ex. <h1>Logo Design Greenville SC</h1> Would tell the browser this is the most important header.
This is an image from my previous post on Search engine optimization. It gives you an idea of the Google Search layout:
The Google Layout Explained
1. Put Keywords in your domain name
Example: www.graphicdesigngreenville.com
2. Clip the .html off page names and use keywords in page names.
Example: www.pgraphics.biz/website-design
3. Put main site navigation as close to the top of the page as possible and don’t use images for your navigation!
It’s kind of common sense to make navigation one of the first things you see and most websites have this right because it makes design sense, but there are the exceptions-don’t be one. Images shouldn’t be in navigation because google can’t read them.
4. Image ALT tags and URL TITLE tags
These are very important not only for adding keywords to but for user accessibility. If the viewer is visually impaired, these tags are read to them though a screen reader program.
5. Don’t create a completely FLASH-based site. Google can’t read it (yet).
An easy way to tell if the site is flash is by right clicking on the page. Flash is great for image slide shows and videos, interactive displays, but not for the complete site.
6. Get into the free local searches in Yahoo and Google
The local search usually is shown before the organic search. See image below.
GOOGLE LOCAL – www.google.com/local/add
YAHOO! LOCAL – listings.local.yahoo.com/csubmit/index.php
7. Write content relevant to the keywords you want people to search for.
Google is trying to give the searcher the most relevant content to their search query. By having pages of content about the most searched keywords you want people to find you with will bring you higher and higher in google.
8. Use stragetic keywords in the TITLE tag of your page.
The title shows up on the very top bar of your browser window and usually is the second item in the code making it the first chance to give Google Search some keywords.
9. Use h1 (header) tags and include keywords in them
Don’t be afraid of a little html—the h1 header tags go around the most important headers on the page. Usually it looks like this: <h1>Logo Design in Greenville SC</h1>
10. Create a blog and comment on other blogs
Blogs are easy for anyone to update once they are set up. You can set up a blog on a blog site like blogger.com, on a separate domain, or on your current domain in a sub-directory. When you comment on someone’s blog, they usually let you include your domain, making it a good way to do tip #11.
11. Find sites that will link to you
It could be a site that targets the same customers, but is not in direct competition with you. The larger the site the better and the more relevant to your targeted keywords the better. Include your site on the obvious sites like Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn. Switch it up and include pages other than your index page (like a product or service page).
12. Create and submit a Sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft
Sitemaps guarantee (99.9% of the time) you will be in the index, so people can actually find you.
Here’s a site that creates the sitemap for you: www.xml-sitemaps.com
You just have to download the file they give you to your computer and then upload it to your site.
Here’s where you submit your sitemap URLs:
www.google.com/webmasters
siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
webmaster.live.com
These tactics produce the best results in local searches
These tactics work great for local searches. Most people search on a local level when searching for many services and products. When I search, I usually search “restaurants greer sc” or something similar.
Want more on the subject of Search Engine Optimization? Here’s a blog entry I wrote on that subject: http://www.graphicdesigngreenville.com/small-business-marketing/search-engine-optimization-myths-revealed/
Disclaimer: These are meant to help designers and business owners alike in creating the most effective websites. The information came from personal trial and error and reading SEO articles.
If you need help with your website, feel free to contact Design Smart.
