You’ve finally embraced the new millennium and developed a website for your business along with the rest of the world, but the phrase “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply to your current website traffic.  Just creating a beautiful and functional website isn’t enough to generate additional revenue and profits or build your brand; there is hard work involved to bring your website to the attention of potential customers.  Search engine optimization is necessary, and there are simple strategies you can employ to help increase your website’s search engine rankings and traffic.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of designing a website to be more “search engine friendly” and to drive a larger amount of qualified traffic to the website from higher rankings on various search engines like Google and Yahoo.  The ultimate goal of SEO is to rank your website on the first page of search results generated for any relevant keyword search, because any results after the first page are likely to be viewed less frequently or possibly ignored completely.  The purpose of SEO is to make a website “readable” by search engine crawlers (also known as bots, robots spiders); these crawlers are simply programs used by various search engines to continuously explore the World Wide Web and catalog and classify websites based on each site’s content. 

SEO techniques include careful consideration of a website’s content, basic graphic design elements, and linking strategies.  Any SEO plan should take into consideration the following elements to increase a website’s search engine rankings:

• Keywords
• Meta Tags
• Content
• Website Design
• Links
• Time

Keywords are of the utmost importance to a website’s search engine rankings and need to be carefully researched and determined based on each individual website’s content, target audience and the ultimate function of the website.   A keyword is defined as a word or group of words that a searcher might type into a search engine to find relevant web pages.  Much time and attention should be given to generating and prioritizing relevant keywords for a website.   When building an effective keyword list, consideration should be given to the searcher’s knowledge of the business (or lack of knowledge) as well as the service or product being offered by a website.  Industry specific jargon or technical keywords should not be used to attract the general public consumer but might be necessary if a website is trying to attract business-to-business prospects. 

Online tools are available to help build keyword lists by suggesting other frequently searched keywords that are associated with any keyword or phrase, just perform a search for the phrase “keyword tool” on any search engine to find them.   Keywords should be narrowed down to the most relevant and important ones on which the business wants to focus, and the keywords should be as specific as possible.  General keywords drastically increase the amount of competition and decrease the likelihood of ranking on the first page of search results.  Keywords should also include the region a business wishes to target, unless the business competes on a national or international basis.  Once a list of relevant keywords is finalized, those keywords should then be incorporated into all of the other SEO elements.

For example, a photographer will find through keyword research that other relevant keywords associated with photographer include wedding photographer, commercial photographer, passport photographer, medical photographer, portrait photographer and fashion photographer.  A photographer who wants to focus their business on commercial photography should make sure all their website content emphasizes commercial photography and could possibly use even more specific keywords such as architectural photography, corporate photography or business photographer.  A commercial photographer working in Springfield, Illinois would also want to include their target area for business within their keyword list by including “Springfield Illinois” as one of their keywords.  This photographer’s finalized keyword list might be architectural photographer, corporate photography, commercial photographer, business photography, Springfield, Central Illinois. 

A finalized keyword list should then be used to develop meta tags for a website.   Meta tags are another useful element of search engine optimization and are defined as information provided in HTML code that is not displayed on a website’s pages.  Search engine crawlers read and index information provided in meta tags to help them classify and rank web pages.  The overall importance of meta tags varies by search engine, but meta tags should always be included in a website’s HTML code just in case a search engine has use for them.  There are three meta tags, title tag, description tag and keyword tag, and all should incorporate some of the relevant keywords that have been determined for a website. 

The meta title tag is extremely important because it is prominently displayed as the headline to be clicked in search engine ranking results.  Great care should be taken when writing the title tag because information from this tag will entice searchers to click and continue on to the website to find more information (or to skip and go elsewhere).  The meta title tag should not be too long, does not need to be a full sentence and should include only the top keywords listed in order of importance.  The meta description tag should be a complete grammatical sentence giving a brief but thorough description of the website and its function.  All or portions of the meta description tag may be used as the body text returned in search engine ranking results.  Finally, the meta keyword tag is a complete shopping list of all relevant keywords for the website and helps search engine crawlers understand for which keyword search terms the website should be ranked and displayed.

Content is King when it comes to SEO, and content is all the “stuff” on a website for a visitor to read, see or hear, including text, images, video and audio.  Website content should include all the relevant keywords previously determined and used in the meta tags, with the most important keywords repeated several times and located in prominent places throughout the site, such as at the top of pages or included in headlines.  Search engine crawlers love websites with a lot of content, because more text helps them to understand the nature and purpose of the website better and aids in their classification of relevant keywords to associate with the website.  The best content to include on a website is industry or product specific information that cannot be found anywhere else; this sort of proprietary information unavailable elsewhere on the internet will motivate crawlers to classify a website as an expert on a certain topic and rank the website high for that topic.  And conversely, a website with little information or information available from many other sources on the internet will not rank highly due to a large number of competing websites or the inability of the search engine crawlers to classify the content and purpose of the site.  Since crawlers are continually re-indexing websites, content should be updated to account for changes in the industry, product or service and to keep up with the competition.

Website design is also a key element to consider for search engine optimization.  The way that content is presented or communicated on a website affects how search engine crawlers access and classify that information.  Very generally speaking, search engine crawlers do not like fancy, high-tech, multi-media content presentation.  Crawlers cannot read and classify images, text embedded in images, video, or audio and some have difficulty interpreting flash animation.  Straight, descriptive text is what search engine crawlers want to read and index.

There are several design techniques to help make sure that search engine crawlers get the descriptive text they desire.  Using meta tags with relevant keywords written specifically for each web page based on the content and keywords included on that single page is a good start.  Images included on any web page should not have embedded text, or at least have the text embedded in images repeated elsewhere within the content of the web page also.  All website images should have alt tags with relevant keywords for search engine crawlers to read and classify.  Important keywords can be highlighted with the use of bold type, a larger font size or a different font to alert search engine crawlers to their relevance. Clickable links to other pages of the website should include text that has relevant keywords describing the content of the landing page.  URLS created for web site pages should include descriptive keywords within the URL itself, such as www.mywebsite.com/ordergourmetcoffee instead of just www.mywebsite.com/order.

The quantity and quality of external links to a website will affect search engine rankings; the more links pointing to a website, and specifically links from websites with similar content or subject matter, the higher a website’s search engine rankings can be.  Search engines count the number of links out there on the World Wide Web that point to a specific website, and more links make a website appear to be more relevant because others are suggesting that website as reference.  Website owners should continually be looking for ways to increase links to their websites.  This can be accomplished by searching out and requesting other website owners to link to your website, and the best links will come from websites with similar subject matter in the same industry that are highly ranked themselves. 

Friends and family will surely provide links to your website if you ask, but more important places to get links are with companies you do business with, associations to which you belong and with search directories such as the Open Directory Project and the Yahoo! Directory.  Another great way to generate external links is by providing excellent content and information on your website for others to find that is unavailable elsewhere.  Once finding your information, these interested parties may then feel this exclusive content is important enough to provide a link to reference it.  Beware of websites that charge to provide links though, most are not highly rated or relevant enough to warrant paying for a link. 

A final element of search engine optimization over which website owners have little control is time.  Well established websites that have been in existence and indexed for longer periods of time will score higher in search engine rankings merely for their longevity.  If a website has been selling a certain product or service online for 10 years and continues to thrive with relevant and updated content, a design that allows search engine crawlers to index it easily, and many industry relevant external links, it will undoubtedly rank higher in search engine results than a newer website.  This just means a website owner needs to continually work and update their website content, design and external links over an extended period of time and eventually search engine optimization techniques will help to increase that website’s rankings.

Search engine optimization is a continuous and ongoing process that involves diligence and persistence on the part of the website owner on a long term basis; there is no quick fix.  If the SEO information and terms mentioned here read like a foreign language, then perhaps it is time to hire an SEO consultant.  Any SEO professional should be able to discuss the basic strategies mentioned here regarding keywords, meta tags, content, website design and external links at great length and take care of implementing these SEO techniques for you.  Prepare for these topics before an SEO consultation, especially keywords for your business, and then an SEO professional will be able to expand and act on that information.  Your website will certainly reap the rewards of higher search engine rankings in the future if you are willing to put in the time and effort.