Optimizing a website for SEO/SEM is a long, complex, and time consuming process. In the case of my own website, it took me a “YEAR” to get just 1 (key) word into the top ranking pages in Google. I mention this so you’ll understand that I’m VERY familiar with the time required, pain & frustration of the process that you’re about to embark into..
Lets talked about next steps both for SEO and SEM
SEO: (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is driven by very complex algorithms that are keep secret by the Google’s of the world. (They don’t tell us exactly what drives page ranking – but we know some things that do work through experience) As you’ve probably already recognized, having a top rank on a search page is a coveted spot to be in. For this reason, tweaking SEO is on-going and labour intensive process, but can also pay off in a big way for websites.
Here are some of the key drivers that we know about to improve SEO placement for your website:
- Meta tags words = not the only option that drives search ranking – in fact Google says they ignore them, but other search engine do use them. For this reason I do added meta tags to websites.
- Meta description tags are used by Google. For this reason, you should spend some time crafting your “description” tags to include as many key words for your site as possible.
- Cross Linking is critical – find similar sites as yours and ask them to post reciprocal links with you.
- Carrying links on the main page to other sites also improves site ranking – hence the reason I’ve added the “Other Great Links” list on the main page.
- Canonical URLs are important: – I’ve always implemented them on site I build.
- One of the MOST important ways of driving your page ranking is for people to search for your site and “CLICK” on the resulting link. The more people who click on a page link in Google, the higher Google ranks the page. This is CRITICAL to understand – it sets the strategy for how you drive people to find the site, through “Newsletters”, “New Articles” and “Free offerings”. In other words, I would give users a Key “search phrase” to find a website via Google rather than the actual URL address. Every time some one searches for a site on Google and clicks on the link, it’s like “voting” for the site. Google pushes the site up it’s search list based on the number of people who click on a site via the list.
- There are MANY others SEO tricks, but this gives you an idea of SEO administration
Let’s talk About SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
You can buy position on Google and other search engines. Each company (Google, Yahoo, Bing.com etc) has its own purchase plan. Much like buying an ad in the Victoria Colonist and another ad in the Province. They all pretty much work the same way.
In reality it’s like being at an auction. You put your bid in for the cost of each individual “click” to your site. If a competitor out bids you, their page ranks 1st. Thankfully you can also specify a top “limit” that you’ll pay …. so for example, you can bid 5 cents a click to a maximum of $500 in a month.
I recommend you try this. I suggest Google.
If this all seems to confusing, then you can certainly contact us and we’ll work your SEO placement for you. http://www.blazeonline.com/websites/
