A website without promotion is like a car without gas, it’s not going anywhere. Website promotion is essential. Promotion comes in many forms. The best is in the form of search engine optimization.
If you are building a new website, you will want to build it with search engine optimization in mind.
Lets talk about the basics of search engine optimization.
Please keep in mind we are covering the basics here. There is much more to search engine optimization than we are going to cover in this article.
The good news is, if you follow what I am about to tell you, you will be ahead of 98% of the websites out there.
We are going to cover selecting the right keywords, on-site optimization, off-site optimization, and things to avoid.
The Right Keywords
I always start by determining the theme of the website. What is the purpose of the website and who is it for? Once you answer these questions you can start the optimization process.
Now that you know the theme you can determine what “keyword phrase” is best for your website. A keyword phrase is a group of words used to search the Internet using a search engine like Google or Yahoo. You need to use one or more keyword phrases that is/are relevant to your website theme and audience.
On-site Optimization
The most important placement of your keywords is in your H1tags of your website. The bolded text at the top of this page is an H1 tag. The search engines use H1tags as a way to determine what your website theme is.
You will also want to write your copy in such a way as to include your keyword phrases several times. Do it in such a way that it will not effect the readability of your website copy.
Always put your reader first and search engine optimization second.
Off-site Optimization
The single biggest factor in search engine optimization is links from other sites or inbound links.
The search engines view inbound links as votes for your website, and almost all links count. The weight of the vote is determined by several factors. The main one is the anchor text of the link. The anchor text is the visible part of the link. Look to the upper left area of this page at the menu and you will see blue text. That blue text is the anchor text of the link.
The best inbound links will have your keyword for their anchor text.
Things to Avoid
The search engines have had many years to evaluate websites and have become savvy.
In the old days (7 or 8 years ago) some developers would hide text by making the text the same color as the background. They did this as a way to make their website more appealing to visitors, knowing the search engine would read text not visible to the human eye.
Another thing they used to do and still might be doing is to present one page to you and I and another to the search engines. An optimized page for the search engines and a page optimized for humans.
There are other tricks too. Do not use these tricks. If you get caught you may find your website permanently banned from the search engines.
If banned you will have to start the whole process over from scatch. So don’t take that chance.
A website without promotion is like a car without gas, it’s not going anywhere.
By following the basics of search engine optimization, selecting the right keywords, doing some on-site optimization, and getting some quality inbound links , your website will be ahead of 98% of the websites on the Internet.