How to improve your website for search engines

www.easy-digital-marketing.com

- A lsit of easy examples of improvements you or your Website Manager are able to perform on your own!

by Veronica Stenberg

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Introduction - Seo is easy . not wizardry! Let me give you some simple examples of website improvements which you are able to do yourself:

The checklist:

There are plenty of basic improvements you can do your-self when it comes to search engine optimizing your web-site. A lot of the work is (or should be if not!)simple “best practice” when it comes to website management.

Good organization and planning is half the job done. So therefore I’ve created a checklist for you to use as a guide to your SEO empowerment and improvements!

Before you start, you may want to use WebsiteGrader to give you a heads start on what needs to be improved on your website.

1. Get your keywords right

2. Finding out if your website is indexed

3. Your pages

4. Code

5. Content

6. Copy

7. URLs

8. Various

9. Links

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I advice that you put on your thinking cap and start eval-uating the keywords and/or phrases you want your web-site to rank higher for. To achieve this, this is your online tools:

Google Analytics: www.google.co.uk/analytics

Google Webmaster Tools: www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters

Google Insight for Search: www.google.com/insights/search

Thesaurus.com: http://thesaurus.com

Your competitors source code

• Create a document of your keywords/phrases, and make sure this is included in your online marketing strategy.

• Geo-targeting – if your company only supply a service within a specific geographical region, make sure to consider to include geographical location/s

1. Get your keywords right: 2. Finding out if your web-site is indexed:

1. Go to Google.com (or whatever suffix is relevant for you)

2. Type in “site:yourdomainname.com”- In my case: site:veronicastenberg.segave me on the 14/08/2011663 results

or use your Google Webmaster Tools, if you have this for your domain to get an indication if and what pages of your website is indexed.

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For each page make sure vital keywords are present in:

• Page titles

• Meta description

• Meta keywords

• URLs generated – should reflect your key words in them (where relevant and logical)

3. Your pages

• CSS files should should be placed externally and linked in

• JavaScript files should be placed externally and linked in

• Image mapping code, should preferably be placed in the bottom of the HTML if possible

• Cookies – try to use an alternative solution or don’t use cookies on content pages

4. Code

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Make sure to use your keywords in and for the following:

• HTML files

• Images

• Alt text on images and links

• Internal link text

• Use keywords in Heading tags, especially H1

• Bold keywords if possible and within reason

5. Content

• Should contain your keywords where relevant

• Use important keywords in the beginning of your copy is possible

• Re-use your keywords, within reason

• Product headings – i.e if you sell pregnancy clothes, your tops should for example all be named “maternity jersey top” and not just “jersey top”

• Product descriptions – look at the copy, apply the same logic as above, where relevant!

• Don’t over stuff your descriptions with keywords, only where relevant is key. Remember that the end of the day we create website for humans.

6. Copy

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• For dynamic URLs with parameters in them, use a URL re-write tool for this, if possible

• Make sure the URLs that are generated follow a neat structure like for example: domain.com/category/product_name.htm

7. Url’s

• Have you created a sitemap?

• Have you submitted your website to google through webmaster tools?

• Have you duplicated your navigation with simple text links in the footer?

• Do you look at the data in Google Analytics on a regu-lar basis to track any progress?

8. Various

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• Do you have a link building strategy for external web-sites?

• Make sure your keywords are included in the link text

• Make sure you have considered if other pages are more relevant to build links to, then just your root domain

• Internal links, within your website, linking to other pages, the same rules for keywords in the link text ap-ply for these

• Tool: MajesticSEO – for checking out your competi-tions link building activities, next to yours www.majesticseo.com

9. Links It’s simple:

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Contact me:

Email: veronica@veronicastenberg.seTwitter: @VeronicaVainMy newsletter: http://bit.ly/xOMQyS

Explore:

http://portfolio.veronicastenberg.sehttp://www.veronicastenberg.sehttp://blog.veronicastenberg.se

I hope this simple checklist will be useful for you and contribute towards your websites success.

At the moment I’m writing my first eBook: Easy DIgital Marketing - packed with digital marketing knowledge - so sign-up to get notified or just to receive sample chapters from me at: www.easy-digital-marketing.com

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