How To Optimize Your Site For Google
In any business the most important thing is traffic. In a bricks and mortar shop it is traffic through the door that brings the sales. Each person that walks through the door is a potential customer. It is no different on the internet. Your site is found because a search engine sent them through their search or you have drawn them through other advertising.
Seeing as how a lot of your business will come through the search engines you need to make sure that you are listed in the top 10 or 20; Basically the first two pages. Here are some of the things you must do:
Get the best keywords
In choosing your keywords you need to make sure that you can get it listed in the top 10. Some words have so much competition that it would be foolhardy to even attempt to use them. Trying to use these words would be a waste of time.
Long tail keywords are better than a single word. A long tail keyword is a phrase made up of from 3 - 5 words. Some words are very popular. Take for instance “Internet Marketing”. If you did a search on this you will find that there are thousands of searches each month. You will also find that it has far too much competition. Your chance of getting your site listed in the top 10 using this keyword would be almost impossible.
What you need to do to optimize your site.
Of first importance is your page title tag. This tag is very important as it is used by Google in its search results. This tag is used in each of Google’s listings.
In setting up this tag, you need to use the keyword phrase that your research has helped you to choose. It is best to have this phrase come up early in your title tag. If you can use it twice in the tag, do so. You MUST use it at least once in this tag.
Another thing you must do is have a different title tag for each page of your site.
Another thing that can help is having an XML Sitemap. This won’t help your rankings but it will help Google index your site changes more quickly.
It is important to use Robots.txt. This is the first file the robot will look for each time they visit your site. Having this file will reduce 404 errors appearing in your log file.
This has been just a few points that will help in getting your site into the top 10 to 20 of Google. There are many more things we can and should do. They will be the subject of future articles.
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