Simple Website Tips to Increase Your Search Engine Rankings

Websites are an essential part of doing business - they are as essential as a phone and a business card for business success.

But, can people find you when they look for you on the web?  When people are looking for your product or service they generally will not type the name of your company or your business name into a search engine. They don't know you exist. People will type in what they are looking for. They won’t type in Bob Smith Premium Furniture, they will type in “leather lounge suites + Brisbane ”.

If your website is buried on page 250 of Google for that search term, you may as well not exist.  Most people will look at maybe the top 5 results on the first page from a search engine, so if you are serious about your business that is where you need to be found for your search terms.

Where you appear in search engines like Google is the result of a highly complex algorithm – but you do have some control over the factors in your site and by adjusting them you will improve your rankings.

Here are my top 10 simple website tips to increase your search engine rankings.

1. Delete your flash front page.  Flash is a type of computer coding that creates animated pages.  Flash front pages are pretty – but generally they are search engine poison. Search engines think the front page of your website is the most important page in the whole site. They expect to find information about the theme of the website and what it contains.  Flash appears to search engines as a blank page. Without words to work from the search engine spiders can’t work out what the site is about. If you have a flash front page – delete it. You will see an almost instantaneous jump in your rankings.
2. Your Page titles are important. What you call each page is important. If you title your page “Home” you are wasting a valuable opportunity. Title your page with the most important words about your site -use the most important keywords as your page title – “Leather Lounges | Lounge Suites | Lounges Brisbane ”.
3. Keywords count.   Keywords are the building blocks of the search engine algorithms. They define what business you are in and help people who are looking for your product or service find you. Keywords should be in your metatags as well as throughout the copy on your pages. Don’t overdo it though otherwise you will fall foul of “keyword stuffing” penalties - you need to have them in the right places for maximum results.
4. You need different keywords on each page. Each page on your website is different and talks about different things. As a result you need to use the keywords that are relevant to each page’s contents. If you use the same words throughout the site, you are affecting your search engine rankings.
5. Watch for duplicate content. Search engines hates the same things on different pages and won’t index those duplicate pages. Being a computer, when the search engine spiders your page they calculate whether or not you are duplicating content by looking at everything including your page template, pictures, formats as well as words.  You need to make sure each page is sufficiently different to avoid the duplicate content penalty.
6. Alt Tag Your Pictures. Every picture or graphic on your page has the space to put an “alt” tag to help vision impaired people read your site (or it can be used to describe the content of the photo if someone has turned off all photos in their browser). Alt tags area a great place to add in keywords. So a photo on my site for example isn’t just a “man” it is a “SEO copywriter”.
7. Keep it fresh and new. Search engines love content that is fresh and updated regularly.  You should never just set and forget your website. You should add content in regularly through things such as a blog, articles and newsletters.
8. Inbound links.  High quality inbound links are important to your rankings. Ideally the links need to be from higher ranking websites or blogs than you. The easiest way to do this is through writing articles and submitting them throughout online ezines. You can also comment on other people's blogs and include a link back to your site or you can social bookmark your site.
9. Content at the top. Search engines sometimes don't get to the full level of your site, often stopping about 3 levels down. That means search engines look at your home page, the next page down and then the page below that. If you have good stuff buried down in your website it may not be found unless you have a great site index.
10. Clear site navigation. Search engine spiders like a smooth and logical flow of pages throughout your site. If a spider can’t follow the flow then it can’t index your pages.  Keep your navigation path clear and logical.

Improving your rankings can be as simple as following these 10 tips.

Of course you can call us and we can help you with some or all of these strategies.  Just drop us an email to see how we could help you.

Ingrid Cliff is an SEO copywriting guru and the Chief Word Wizard of Heart Harmony - her writing services studio that helps put your business into words. Ingrid writes a free weekly newsletter packed full of small business tips to help both you and your business grow www.heartharmony.com.au.