Netalot

Every web site owner or blogger would like to have more traffic through their site. This is irrespective of whether money needs to be made or not. Search engine placement will provide one answer to visitors finding the site.

Do not buy a new domain unless you have to, is the first tip. Google has an aging delay for all new domains. It’s best if at all possible that you use an existing domain. You could end up waiting a few months before your site will show up in Google for any keyword phrases that are important to you.

Optimise your site for your users and not for the search engines. This will require you to identify your target audience first and working your keywords around their needs and what they might be looking for.

Spend as much time as necessary to research your keywords. Use research tools provided by Google and other search engines. If you are a serious internet marketer you might want to buy keyword search software.

Compile a list of relevant words and phrases for your site and use them in your content, in your meta tags and titles. Don’t go for vague terms such as travel or vacation. You will be competing with too many sites. Look for niche topics in a specific area to maximise their effectiveness.

Design your site with your keywords in mind. Blog software allows you to insert your keywords easily into your site. For web sites the web designer needs to know how to approach this and how to insert keywords into the HTML code. Be aware that Flash animations are attractive but don’t add anything to the search results.

Be careful to build your site mostly in HTML to keep it ‘crawler-friendly’. A search engine can’t index graphics and Flash. That doesn’t mean you can’t use creative elements, just be sure to have a lot of space available for ordinary content where your keywords may be inserted.

Label internal text links and clickable images as clearly and descriptively as possible. Users and search engine crawlers look at the clickable portion of your links to help them understand what they’re going to find once they click through. Don’t waste their time by making them have to guess.

Spend time writing good content for your site whether a standard web site or a blog. Build in your keywords or keyword phrases in such a manner that it appears to fit in naturally. Make sure that search engines find your keywords by placing them in the relevant areas in the content.

Keywords should not be hidden in graphics or in Flash. Connect with your visitors with your content but be sure to fit your keywords in as well. It has to make sense to the user as well as the search engine crawler.

Incorporate your keywords into each page’s title tag. The title tag is critical because it is given a lot of weight with the search engines. Whatever keyword phrases you have written your copy around should also be used in your title tag.

Make sure your site is linkworthy. Getting other sites to link to your site is an important part of any successful search engine optimisation campaign. All of the major search engines place a lot of emphasis on what sites link to your site. It is a way for search engines to decide whether your site is important or not.

The above are some tips on how to approach search engine optimisation. You will be able to follow these steps yourself without having to employ an SEO consultant to help you.