If you need people to find your business easily – and the competition in your market is fierce – you ought to invest in optimizing your website so Google and other search engines understand what you sell. By doing so, you will rank higher than your competitors.
The goal is to be in the first position on page 1 of Google’s results, right? Big books have been written about the subject of search engine optimization (SEO). But the important things to remember are that you need to do two things in order to help search engines rank your site highly.
1. On-page optimization: Add the proper code, tags, descriptions, headings, etc. If your site provides valuable information (which is a “must” these days), then you need to organize that information for search engines as you would organize a newspaper for readers. Headings, sub heads, descriptions… all help readers determine what is relevant to them. Same thing for your website. Only difference is… Google needs to understand what is relevant to searchers so they can index your site properly. Adding the proper code will help Google do that and will increase your rankings- thereby driving relevant traffic to your site.
2. Off-page optimization: Get lots of links from other credible, relevant websites to point to your website. By doing so, you’ll be signaling to search engines that your site has valuable information and is credible. Sure it’s a bit of a popularity contest. But didn’t the most popular kid in high school become the home coming king or queen?
SEO is time-consuming and tedious and it could take many months before the search engines recognize and reward your efforts with high rankings. If you don’t have time to do it yourself, hire a reputable firm to help you.
In the meantime, any optimization is better than none so start with the most basic optimization first, which is to add a well-conceived title tag to your site. This is what people (and search engines) see at the top when viewing your site in their browser.
