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10.30.08 Tips To Improve Your SEO Ranking  By Lee Odden We continue our series of weekly SEO basics questions and answer today with a question that acknowledges the value of approaching search engine optimization holistically, but indicates a desire to keep things simple and focus on the basics. "… you mentioned to use a holistic approach to aid in a better SEO, but specifically what might be the "top 3? things can I do or focus on my website to best help improve my search rankings on Google" Since Google dominates the search marketplace, you can read their "How can I create a Google-friendly site?" recommendations. SEO is a big topic and many web site owners are overwhelmed, feeling like it's simply too much to handle, getting "fire hosed" with information from consultants. As a result, they look for bit sized chunks of information - tactics. Sometimes these individual tactics can make a dent in the problem, but not considering the overall picture including current site, competition, online marketplace, resources, ongoing marketing and analytics can result in lost opportunity and bottom line lost revenue. The smart answer to the question about "top three SEO tactics" to focus on starts with an evaluation of the site in question to see if there are any immediate, high impact opportunities such as unblocking search engine spiders from crawling the site or assessing the content management system and any other major possible barriers to getting crawled and included.
Assuming those questions are solved and the market for the web site is well understood, the next thing is to make sure the site content is targeting the right keywords. Understanding what potential customers are looking for and applying that insight with a content creation and promotion strategy is instrumental for optimial search engine visibility. There are a variety of free keyword tools to do research on what types of words are being used to find the kinds of products/solutions offered on your web site including the Google Keyword Tool, Google's Trends for Websites and the Microsoft adCenter Labs Keyword Research Tool. You can also find a list of the best keyword research tools in this list (as voted by our readers). The second thing to do is to apply the keyword research you've done to the web site and content being published to the web. Make sure each web page contains unique, descriptive text using relevant and popular keywords. The key on-page influences of keywords on search engine rankings include: * Keywords in the title tag * Keywords in text links to your web pages from other relevant web sites * Keywords in the copy of your web pages * Keywords used in links between pages of your site Continue reading this article. About the Author: Lee Odden is President and Founder of TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog marketing and online public relations. He's been cited as a search marketing expert by publications including U.S. News & World Report and The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing expertise at Online Marketing Blog offering daily news, interviews and best practices. |
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