HOW DOES YOUR WEBSITE RANK?
By Michelle Harrington, Emagine Website Design
This month’s column is brought to you by Michelle Harrington of Emagine Website Design, an associate of Fujita & Miura Public Relations. She has been providing website design and internet marketing services for six years.
Websites are a critical PR tool. According to a recent check on Google, the web’s leading search engine, there are over 8.5 billion web pages on the internet. If you have an existing website or are planning to launch a new one, you may be wondering how your website will be found by potential customers in this sea of information? No matter how you plan to publicize or market your website offline, it is very likely that you will need to rely on search engine traffic to help drive targeted customers to your site. This is where search engine optimization comes in.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making your website as visible as it can be to the search engines and ultimately to your customers. A website created without SEO is like opening a new business but not telling anyone about it – and just hoping customers will eventually find it. Businesses launched in this manner often fail and so will a website that doesn’t employ at least some basic SEO strategies. SEO is a combination of the following strategies implemented together to enable a website to rank well for its targeted keywords in the search engines.
First, define your target audience and take the time to think like your customer. What does your customer want? What are they afraid of? What is important to them? What challenges or issues have they encountered before when purchasing this type of product/service?
Second, anticipate the keywords your customer may be using when searching for a business like yours. Use a keyword tool like KeywordDiscovery.com to collect real data on keywords that your potential customers are using so that you can optimize your website accordingly.
Third, every page of your site is different so every page of your site should have a unique and descriptive title and description tag, found in the Head section of the HTML code. Title and description tags are also great places to selectively incorporate your targeted keyword phrases. Search engines use website title and description tags to feature your website link in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Make sure your title and description tags accurately convey what is found on the page and are compelling to your potential customers.
Fourth, when writing your website copy, remember it’s not all about you. Speak to what your customers need and want by using customer-focused keyword-rich copy. Find ways to create memorable and unique copy that makes an emotional connection with your potential customers. And don’t forget to incorporate your targeted keywords naturally into your copy and headlines.
Finally, link building is an important part of SEO. Inbound links to your website are considered by the search engines to be “votes” for your website. If you feature well-written, valuable content on your website finding link partners will be easy. Always choose quality links from directories and relevant partner/ally websites and stay away from link farms and linking schemes.
For more information on search engine optimization, contact Michelle Harrington at (808) 823-8051 or visit www.EmagineWebsiteDesign.com.
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