How To Optimize Website

Although there are a lot of articles on a subject of “How to optimize website”, we hope that this article will be very helpful guideline and check-up list for you.

 

Identify your keywords and keyword phrases

One of the first steps in the process website optimization is identifying keywords or keyword phrases that potential customers would use to find out about your business and the services you provide. For example, you wake up one morning with a tooth ache. Normally, you would go online, do a search for a local dentist, make a couple calls and be on your way. What if you just type in "dentist" and go to the first one that came up?

When identifying your keywords or keyword phrases it is very important to be as specific as you can. Analyze every possible product or service you provide to your customers, and think of all the ways someone could do a search for those products and services.

For example, in case of the dentist, you most likely do a search for "dentist" followed by the location you live in – your town, city, zip code (otherwise you would get information on dentists all over the country), or “emergency dentist, location”, etc.

The same applies to your business and your website optimization. Think to yourself, who am I marketing to? Ask your friends, how they would look your business up on the web. Do not use more than two and three related keyword phrases per page, too few words and you might not be specific enough, too many words and it's overkill.

 

Use Free Online Tools To Tune Up Your Keywords

Google has free online keyword tools to help you to optimize your website. The tools enable you to put in all the keywords regarding your business, and then they'll provide you with the number of searches each keyword or phrase generates for the last month and gives you a monthly average Example: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal  From there you can determine and tune up which keyword phrases are most relevant to your business and your optimization. There are other keyword tools, provided by Google and other companies you might want to look up.

 

Keyword Placement Is Crucially Important

Placing your keywords is just as important for website optimization as identifying them. A good rule is to have only a couple keyword phrases that you will associate with each page on your site.

• Include your keyword phrases in headings and subheadings

• Start strong by adding your keywords in the first paragraph and the very first line and the first line of the last paragraph. Search engines like this as it makes it easier for them to classify the article, site and content.

• Also, things like putting your keywords in a bold or italic font can also be helpful.

• Using keyword phrases in intra-site links can be very helpful for your site ranking.

• Try to use lateral semantic indexing where you use the same keywords in the form of plurals or related variations. The more the number of variations you put in, the better the page ranking.

• The first common mistake most make is thinking you can just repeat the keyword. Not so. Fill your content with an average of 2% of Keywords per page of 100 words. That means your page should run an average of 10 Keywords in a page of 500 words. Do not put in more than that because search engines tend to classify high keyword pages as spam or duplicated content and penalize your website.

• When discussing your website design with the company you are using, make sure that they also place keywords in the title, description, file names, headers, and intra-site links. These important tidbits should help you have a greater understanding of the importance of keywords and their placement.

When creating your content, it's important to use your keywords so that the flow freely in the description you are providing. The content must read well.

 

Keep Your Website Content Fresh
 

Fresh and new content updated regularly is one way to ensure that Google keeps returning to your page again and again. Once the search algorithms are trained to realize that the content on your page changes regularly and is completely original you are more likely to see your website higher up in page rankings.

 

Keep Your Website Growing

Keep on adding new related articles to your website – information that customers might be interested in.

 

Keep Your Website Simple

Don't flood your website with complex codes like Flash, Ajax, etc. Of course, the site might look great, but this just to slow down your site and as a result can prevent search engines from properly crawling and indexing your website.

 

Inbound Links

Discussing the subject “How to Optimize Website” we need to mention incoming links. How many websites are linked to your site? Links are very important in today's Google rankings and have tremendous value.

First rule of links is to keep it relevant in order for inbound links to give your site the most value. If the page that links to you is relevant that is good, if the entire web site linking to you is relevant, that is even better.

Reciprocal linking (you link to their site, they link back to yours) has seen its value drop considerably over the past few years; however, if the site you are trading with is relevant you can still receive value from these links

Paid links Google frowns upon, however they still can work. Often you can find highly reputable and relevant websites which are offering paid advertising spots. If these links are coded to link directly to your website without passing through any tracking redirects, you will in many cases see value in the form of both direct traffic and increased link densities and rankings.

 

Writing Articles For Your Website Optimization

Writing and distributing articles is a great way to help boost both your link counts and your site traffic. Consider writing articles and submitting them to some of the more popular services such as EzineArticles. Make sure to include a link to your site from somewhere within the article, or at least within your bio. Try to use a targeted keyword phrase as part of the anchor text for additional value.

 

Submit your Site to DMOZ, Yahoo and Other Directories

Directory based links can be of real help in your site ranking, especially if they are from highly reputable directories, the two biggest being DMOZ.org and the Yahoo Directory.

Getting a site into dmoz.org is extremely valuable. Google loves links from DMOZ and your site will reap the benefits. The catch, however, is actually getting your site into the directory (since it’s a volunteer based program and has a deficit of volunteers). Submit your site every 4-6 months until listed. If you are persistent you will get in eventually.

Yahoo Directory is seen as an authority in the eyes of Google, and getting your site in will help your link reputation. This link does come at a price of $299 per year.

If your business is local submit to local directories. There are a number of other valuable directories out there that can help you with your search rankings. Before submitting to any directory the key is a combination of relevance and authority. If the directory is relevant and active, it may be worth considering.

 

Use Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools can be very useful for your optimization efforts. It may not directly help you obtain better rankings, but allows you to trouble shoot problems.

XML Sitemaps: This is the most common reason to use Google Webmaster Tools – to submit your XML sitemap. By submitting XML sitemap directly to Google you can check up on the spidering status.

Error checking: Webmaster Tools is also helpful for checking on various error URL's that Google may know about. Under the Diagnostics > Web Crawl you can view any errors that Google has to report on your site. By cleaning up any errors you can help boost your chances of rankings.

WWW Preference: Select your domain preference under Tools > Set Preferred Domain. In most cases you will want to select the version including the "www".

 

We hope that these tips on How to Optimize Website were very helpful to you. If you are looking for a company to take care of your SEO and Marketing needs – Houston Website Design will be happy to help you. Call us today for a free estimate.