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SEO tips for dummies
Search engine optimization tips for beginners
Getting a website in top is a thing that every webmaster would love to achieve. Achieving top rankings for your favorable keywords is not a very difficult task but its hard to decide from where to start with and it may land you it totally different part of the globe if you doesn’t follow the webmaster guidelines set by major search engines for webmasters and search engines optimization experts or companies. In this article I am posting few search engine optimization tips for beginners but these tips are equally beneficial for any SEO professional.
1. Don’t purchase new domains: If you are trying to get your website ranked in engines and so far you don’t have any substantial success, then don’t try to go and try your luck in new domain. Reason here is that search engine give value to the age of the domain and hence it’s recommended to try figuring out things that may be hurting your website’s reputation over search engines. However there may be circumstances when you may need to start new domain under such situation using permanent redirect to your new domain is recommended to minimize the loss of traffic from search engines.
2. Do extensive keyword research: Spend good amount of time in keyword research and go in as much detail as you can while researching keywords. Don’t select keywords that can bring traffic but brainstorm keywords that can bring you sales. Over years of experience in search engine marketing I have seen that lots of keywords bring you traffic but there are couple of keywords that can bring business, revenue for you. Thus analyze your website traffic to shortlist the keywords that bring you business. Ranking at the top of search engines for these keywords make the actual difference.
3. Use different title and meta tags: Each page of your website needs to have unique title and meta description tags. Your title tag should contain important keywords included in the content of your web pages. One more important point to be taken care is that it’s the title tag of a webpage that will prompt any visitors to click your website at search engine result pages.
4. Don’t over optimize: Never optimize your website rather optimize for your targeted audience. This is one of the common instructions by all major search engines for webmasters.
5. Write Search engine friendly code: Make you website code search engine friendly by preventing excessive use of images, flash, java script menus or links. Use alt and title attributes and images and links. Validate your website HTML, XML and CSS.
6. Use webmaster tools: Evaluate your SEO campaign by using tools like google analytics, webmaster central, yahoo site explorer etc. These tools are very much helpful for webmasters in their SEO campaigns.
7. Get quality links: All of us know off-page optimization is very crucial part of any SEO campaign however only quality links count and contribute to your website’s PR and search engine rankings. Any off-page activity, be it link building, social media marketing, directory submission etc. take care of quality always.
1. Don’t purchase new domains: If you are trying to get your website ranked in engines and so far you don’t have any substantial success, then don’t try to go and try your luck in new domain. Reason here is that search engine give value to the age of the domain and hence it’s recommended to try figuring out things that may be hurting your website’s reputation over search engines. However there may be circumstances when you may need to start new domain under such situation using permanent redirect to your new domain is recommended to minimize the loss of traffic from search engines.
2. Do extensive keyword research: Spend good amount of time in keyword research and go in as much detail as you can while researching keywords. Don’t select keywords that can bring traffic but brainstorm keywords that can bring you sales. Over years of experience in search engine marketing I have seen that lots of keywords bring you traffic but there are couple of keywords that can bring business, revenue for you. Thus analyze your website traffic to shortlist the keywords that bring you business. Ranking at the top of search engines for these keywords make the actual difference.
3. Use different title and meta tags: Each page of your website needs to have unique title and meta description tags. Your title tag should contain important keywords included in the content of your web pages. One more important point to be taken care is that it’s the title tag of a webpage that will prompt any visitors to click your website at search engine result pages.
4. Don’t over optimize: Never optimize your website rather optimize for your targeted audience. This is one of the common instructions by all major search engines for webmasters.
5. Write Search engine friendly code: Make you website code search engine friendly by preventing excessive use of images, flash, java script menus or links. Use alt and title attributes and images and links. Validate your website HTML, XML and CSS.
6. Use webmaster tools: Evaluate your SEO campaign by using tools like google analytics, webmaster central, yahoo site explorer etc. These tools are very much helpful for webmasters in their SEO campaigns.
7. Get quality links: All of us know off-page optimization is very crucial part of any SEO campaign however only quality links count and contribute to your website’s PR and search engine rankings. Any off-page activity, be it link building, social media marketing, directory submission etc. take care of quality always.
Growing Your Small Business
Entrepreneurs often find themselves so caught up in the daily running of their businesses that expansion plans end up on the back burner for some other time. The problem though, is that growing your business is a must, otherwise you’ll be like the proverbial hamster running round and round in that wheel, chasing your own tail instead of achieving real progress.
There are many ways to approach small business growth but underlying each of them, there must be a strategy. Whatever your plans for growth are, they must cover two aspects in detail: short term growth and long term growth.
Short term growth addresses what you will do in the immediate future to make sure that you are moving upwards in the growth curve. This will include things like increasing your customer base, working at improving customer relations, so that you can create repeat business, your marketing strategy and even what you do in back office terms to ensure that operations become smoother and smoother over time. All these will affect profitability in the short term. If you have effective strategies for them, they will help your business grow on a day to day basis.
Your long term plan for business growth is usually planned for the next few years to come. Many businesses opt to look at long term growth as 2 to 3 year strategies. Others, especially small businesses that have been operational for more than 3 years, might look at long term growth strategy in 5 year bites. Long term growth is about business expansion on the larger scale. You have been using your short term strategy to get more customers, to get more repeat sales, and now you can plan to aim for a certain number of clients every year so that every few years you can open a new shop. You might also introduce new products in your long term strategy. You might plan to increase your product base every 3 to 5 years.
It’s important to know that each business is unique and individual circumstances will determine how you plan your expansion. It’s dangerous to plan along the lines of what you see another business doing. Look at your own business as an entity that has features of its own and then based on these features, go ahead and plan for both short and longer term growth.
Remember also that while strategies should be followed, you must allow yourself to be flexible. If you stick too rigidly to plans, you may miss the opportunities that show up from time to time that can benefit your business. Sometimes these opportunities have to be embraced, and it may mean that your strategy is left aside for a little while but being able to seize an unexpected opportunity while not losing sight of your growth strategy, is what growing a small business is all about.
About the guest author: Dane has worked with small business planning for many years in his role as a business finance advisor. He started SmallBusinessWizardry.com as a free resource for those looking for advice onstarting a small business.
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