How to Prepare Your Website For Search Engines

Search engine optimization is the process of making ones website content more search engine friendly to attract traffic by ranking higher.
More than any online marketing strategy, Search engine optimization is essential to the success of any online business.

People mostly rely on search engines to direct them to information sources. Studies have shown that 80% of search engine users go directly to the organic search results and bypass the paid advertising services such as AdSense and Pay Per Click.
That's why you want to make sure that your own websites are visible to these search vehicles.

So how to prepare your web site for the search engines ? Here are 7 essential steps

1.Choose the right keywords:

Choosing the right keywords and phrases for your website is an important part of the process of search engine optimization and making your site more visible to search engines and searchers alike.

2.Analyze your competition :
First, you need to know who your competitors are. They may not be who you think. find out what they are targeting and their linking strategies to get a better overall idea how to get ahead of them.

3.Choose the right web page title:
The title of a web page is one of the most important elements. Good web page titles can remarkably increase the effectiveness of your web site.

4.Optimize Your META Tags:
META tags are hidden code read only by search engine webcrawlers (also called spiders). They live within the HEAD section of a web page. There are actually 2 very important META tags you need to worry about: description and keywords.

5.Create a site map page:
PageRank is relative and shared throughout a website by a unique voting system created by Google. I could spend severals days trying to explain how PageRank works, but what it comes down to is having efficient navigation throughout your site. That where a site map page comes in. Since every page on the website will be linked to the sitemap, it allows webcrawlers and users to quickly and easily find content.

6.Include a robots.txt File:
META tags are hidden code read only by search engine webcrawlers (also called spiders). They live within the HEAD section of a web page. There are actually 2 very important META tags you need to worry about: description and keywords.

7.Be patient:
SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.

Inbound links are important but content is even more important

Google's Maile Ohye writes the following about inbound links in his article:
"Inbound links are links from pages on external sites linking back to your site. Inbound links can bring new users to your site, and when the links are merit-based and freely-volunteered as an editorial choice, they're also one of the positive signals to Google about your site's importance."
Nothing new here. If many related websites link to your site, and if these links look natural, this will help you rankings on Google a lot.
However, links are not the most important ranking factor. Maile Ohye gives a concrete example:
"Let's say I have a site, example.com, that offers users a variety of unique website templates and design tips. One of the strongest ranking factors is my site's content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources -- however, one inbound link is from a spammy site.
As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking. "
The website's content is mentioned as one of the strongest ranking factors. The inbound links are additional. That makes sense. The content of your website tells Google what your website is about.
If you want to get a high ranking for the keyword "Miami real estate" but your web pages are about microwave ovens then you won't get high rankings for that keyword.
For that reason, it is very important that you optimize your web pages for the keywords for which you want to get high rankings before you try to get links from other sites.
Google analyzes over 200 ranking factors
According to the article in Google's blog, Google analyzes more than 200 signals (we call them 'ranking factors') to specify the position of a web page in the search results:
"Given the user's query, over 200 signals (including the analysis of the site's content and inbound links as mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant results to the user."
If you want to know if the ranking factors of your web pages are correct then you should analyze your website for FREE with 3swebdesign.com