Optimize your site to increase search engine traffic immediately
by Yuri
October 25th, 2006
Generally, most of the things you do to create, maintain and promote your site give you long-term results. Let’s see how you can optimize your website to gain immediate increase in traffic.
Plan outline
As the only thing that can give you immediate results is on-page optimization, let’s see how you can improve your pages to get more traffic:
- research your keywords
- write the title tags with keywords in mind
- write unique meta tags (description and keywords)
- write headings and subheadings using one or two keywords
- use keywords in body copy
- if applicable, write short alt attributes for the images for the humans
- set links from other pages of your site to the target page with the relevant link (anchor) text
Research your keywords
The main reason people will find your pages from the search engines is that the pages have the words the people searched for. Now how do you know what your potential customers are searching for? In steps keyword research.
You can use quite a number of tools to learn which phrases people type in the search boxes:
Though all of the tools are free or have free trials, you can buy a monthly subscription at WordTracker or KeywordDiscovery for under $50 and use them to their full pontential.
When searching for the keywords, you can not only see the phrases, related to your main keyphrases, but also less competitive phrases with 3-5 words. Ideally, you need to pick the phrases that are not too competitive, but yet semi-popular, which will ensure that you can rank well for them and get decent amount of search engine visitors.
Page titles
One of the important onpage factors is the page title - the title tag. It is quite recommended for you to use your targeted medium-competitive phrase in the title. Just make sure the title is readable by the humans (such as Use direct email marketing software to boost your business).
Meta tags
While meta tags make no effect on search engine rankings, the contents of the meta description tag are used in the so-called ’snippet’ on the search engine results pages below the title. Ideally, you should use some call to action there along with the keyword. It will ensure that the search engine visitor understands that your page is related to his/her query and goes to your page, partly affected by your call to action (call to action in meta description was noted to increase click-throughs by 5-10% alone).
Headings and subheadings
Though the most important on-page ranking factor is a page title, page headings and subheadings play their role as well. If you use words, relevant to the content of the page, there, it will not only make it easier for the search engines to rank your page, but easy to read and understand the contents of the page for your readers as well.
Body text
While it seems obvious that the page itself should have the words, related to the topic, it is not quite the end in itself. Not only you should use the keyphrase you target for in the body text, but also derivatives (stemmings) and synonyms of the main keywords. This will ensure that your text is readable by the humans and should get you the extra traffic as well.
Alt attributes
An alt attribute is used with an image to show those, who have images turned off or don’t see them, what the image is about. Generally, an alt attribute should describe what the image shows in short. If you have an image, related to the page topic, there, naturally, will be a related keyword in the alt attribute, as well.
Internal links
Though on-page optimization is important, links is one of the most important ranking factors as well. If you set the links from your site pages to the targeted with the relevant keyword phrase (email marketing software, for instance), it will raise the page profile for the phrase somewhat. You should pay attention to linking to the targeted pages naturally, as it will not only help your visitors navigate around your site easily, but your pages to rank better, too.
Conclusion
As you can see, simply paying attention to what words you use and where can make a difference on how your visitors and the search engines view your pages. Normally, it all translates to the fact that the people understand that your page is related to their search query by seeing it repeated in different parts of the page and stay, read and buy from you. As the search engines strive to copy human behaviour, they should value your efforts as well, which should bring the desired search engine visitors.
Next Article: In the Company of Giants Previous Article: Before you build - a guide to developing a winning website (Part 2)