7 SEO Tips to Help You Get More Traffic

It seems that everyone has a website these days. If you are a business, a website is one of the most important marketing tools you can have. It creates the potential to attract new customers and lets them know what you do. But with all the websites out there, how will people find yours? Well there are a lot of ways to promote your website and some of them can cost a lot of money. But let’s look at how you can drive traffic to your website without spending any money. All it will cost you is a little research and some of your time.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is probably one of the most important things you will do when setting up your website. SEO makes your website more visible to search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Below are 7 important things to remember when optimizing you website.

Pick Relevant Keywords

The way search engines find your website is by comparing the words found on your website with the words someone searches for. If your website is more relevant to the search terms entered, it will appear higher in the results. Because of this it is important to know what keywords you are wanting to use to drive traffic to your website. It is good to pick one main keyword and at least three additional keywords. We will call your main keyword the “Theme Keyword” and your other three keywords your “Category Keywords.”

Make sure all the keywords chosen are relevant to what people should expect when they come to your website. Make sure you don’t over use these keywords on your website. Over use will be very obvious to the search engines and will result in a lower ranking. Make sure you are using them in sentences, headlines and links. I will get into how to research the best keywords in another article.

Content is Always King

Having content on every page of your website is very important. Without content there will be nothing for the search engines to find on your website. Images make your website look pretty but they will not help drive traffic to your website. Make sure every page has one of your keywords in an H1 tag. This will give that keyword a higher priority. Also the first paragraph of text on the page should be a summary of the rest of the page. If your visitors are not interested in what they read then they will quickly leave your website.

Use of <h1> and <h2> tags

H1 and H2 tags will not only help users of your website find important content, but they will also help tell Google what your page is about. Make sure not to over use these tags as that will hurt your search engine rank. Make sure you are using your keywords within H1 and H2 tags.

Internal Linking

Linking to other pages on your website is very important to the success of your website. When a search engine indexes your website it will follow links it finds and index those pages as well. It is also very important that your link text is relevant to the page the link is going to. Never use “here” or “click here” when linking. You want the text to describe where the link is going, for example “more SEO techniques” or “learn how to implement SEO.” Make sure all the links on the page are relevant and don’t go crazy with the links.

Use Title Tags

Make sure you are utilizing your title tags. Your title is what shows up at the very top of the browser and it is also what shows up in the search results on search engines. Every page should have a title tag that is relevant to that page. Also make sure you include one of your keywords in the title tag and you are using title tags within your links. For example, <a title=”title of the page” href=”link”>.

Meta Descriptions

Using relevant meta descriptions is just as important as using title tags. Make sure you use a unique meta description for each page of your website. This description is what shows up under the title in search engine results. In one sentence describe what the page is about.

Create a Site Map

Create a site map for your website. A site map is a map of the structure of your website. Once you have created the site map make sure you send it to Google and any other search engine you would like.

Photo credit: Stéfan