Most companies with a web presence do not make much money online. Instead, they make their money through word of mouth or print or television advertising. A lot of companies do not spend the time and effort on Search Engine Optimization. There are many reasons for this. One reason is because they do not have the time and money to spend on SEO work. The second reason, in many cases, is because they have paid a Search Engine Optimization company only to get little or no results.
I will teach you just some of the steps to a successful Search Engine Optimization strategy. One thing to always remember, organic SEO takes time. Google can rank you within a week for an easy keyphrase or many months for a tougher keyword but once you are ranked number 1 it should be smooth sailing and all you really need to worry about is maintaining your position.
Ok, so where exactly should you start? Let’s say you own a car wash company in Houston, Texas. What some SEO companies will do is target the key phrase “car wash.” That is the wrong way to to do keyword research because the term is too broad. Even if somehow you ranked on page one for the term “car wash” then you are still competing with 49 other states that are searching for that term. Once they click on your site and see that you are located in Houston they will click away. Regardless, the term is so competitive that you may never rank for that key phrase to begin with.
Instead it would be beneficial to you to try to rank for a local keyphrase. An example would be “Houston car wash”. Keyword research should take up the bulk of your time when it comes to SEO. Scope out the competition and see what they’re doing. Check to see who links to their sites and see if you could request that those sites link back to you. The reason you want sites linking back to you is because Google also looks at backlinks in determining how important your site is. Each link to your site is considered a vote in Google’s eyes, especially backlinks from reputable websites.
One of the main things to work on is your actual page content. Try to use text and not images for your navigation. Also, try not to use too much javascript. While your page should look appealing, also try to keep your source code as clean as possible. This is why I recommend tabless CSS. Tabless CSS is much cleaner than if you had your site built with tables. Most important when optimizing your website is to have a lot of relevant content and to update your site once in a while, maybe once a month or once every couple of months.
There are many other factors that will help get you ranked higher on Google. These are just some of the most important and basic factors. Once you master these then you can research some more and get more advanced.
