This is for the people that are trying to get a grasp on basic Search Engine Optimization. Do you Know what it is? Do you know how important it is? SEO is the foundation to the web site you are building! Build your site on a week foundation and it Will crumble! Build it on a strong foundation and you will have a site that is Recognized and Found! This is the reason to have a web site in the first place...to be found by the search engines. If your site is on page 10, no one will ever find it! Here I will give some tips that I have learned on how to get your site recognized, and maybe even to show up on Page One!
This information will most likely get a lot of the "Gurus" of SEO mad, because they want you to pay them for this, but I have done it for Free, and so can you! Let me first say that I am not a Website Guru, or anything like that. I am a small business owner that out of necessity has managed to get his site on page one of Google for my key words, and that's out of over 188,000,000 to 48,000,000 (yes that's Millions)! I am also not only on page one for local searches, but my site is there several times on page one! So here is how "I" do it, as a business owner, not a SEO Guru, and it did not cost me anything but time.
Lets start at the beginning, (take notes!) the framework of your site. You must first have a plan, not a business plan or anything like that, but a "Really good" idea of what you want to get out of your web site. Write down what your prospective clients are looking for. This is really easy, just pretend You are a client looking for your product or service, what are you typing into the search engine? Write down the search terms, these will be Keys to getting your business "Found" on the major search engines. The words that you are typing into a search engine are the "Key Words" that get a website found. You will also want to have your text "Content" ready, make sure you include your Key Words in your content, don't go nut's here, just keep in mind that the more times your Key Words are used in your Content, the more relevant your site will be. You can also start to put any of your photos into a separate folder (just for building your site). Make sure your photos are optimized for the Web, it will help with how fast your site Opens! I use a Free program called "PIXresizer" it's fast and FREE!Your "Key Words", the thing you want your prospective clients to search for is CRITICAL! This is where to start, how will we find you, what will we (the consumer) look for, how will we search for your product or service. Once you have these "Key words", the rest is very methodical.As an example, lets say your Key Words are "Amazing Widgets", and your secondary Key Words are "Widgets that Sell", and your third alternative is "The best Widgets". First off, your Domain should reflect your Key Words if at all possible. Having your Key words in your domain is a Big plus, but not as critical as Key word content (I'll go over this later), so with these Key Words you would try to get a domain that is something like, www.widgets.com, or www. amazingwidgets.com, or www.widgetsthatsell.com. Get the idea! This is the first thing that search engines look for, it's what the Crawlers (the search engine robots) look for. But don't worry, even if your domain is something like www.whatever.com, there are ways to make the search engines find you and your product or service.This is one of the 'Strong Foundation" areas I believe I have had great success with my SEO. On your desktop create new folders, one for your photos, one for your page elements (boxes. lines, buttons, etc.) and one for your content (text). I have found that it is very helpful to your SEO to name these folders, Pictures, elements, text files, with Your Key Words. So if your main Key Words are "Amazing Widgets", then name your photo folder, "Amazing Widgets photos", name your page elements folder "Amazing Widgets page elements" and your text folder, "Amazing Widgets content". You will also want to rename any files within that folder with the same heading. So, every file in your "Amazing Widgets photos" folder will start with "Amazing Widgets-Widget1", "Amazing Widget-Widget2" and so on. The same applies to all files in all folders for your site. This may be somewhat controversial, as far as effectiveness, but it works for me, sooo...! You see every time you put Anything on your web site, and I mean anything, a dot, a line, a photo, a text block, it all has a trace back to where it came from. So if your site is Amazingwidgets.com and your photo has a trace to a folder called "Amazing Widgets photos" and a file name of "Amazing Widgets-Widget1" then you have just created a line of Key Words that give your site relevance. All web sites are "Judged" by their Relevance to the Search terms used. You are simply using Very Strong building blocks for the foundation of your site.OK, Time To Build (or re-build) your site! You can use any site building program that you are comfortable with. I use "Bluevoda" because, yes, the software is Free! The only draw back is I have to host my site with Bluevoda, ( 9.95/mo!), but I have to host it somewhere, and they have been an Excellent Host! Anywhere you decide to Host your site is fine, just keep in mind that hosting support is Amazingly important, so choose wisely!This is just a "Basic" site configuration and you will have to do some research on how to implement any special effects, forms, buttons, etc. based on the software you use. You will start your site with your "index" page, this is your Home page, or Landing page, and must be named "index" not "Home page". Your headline is Extremely Valuable with SEO, so use a great one. Using the example above, I would use "Amazing Widgets That Sell!" You can see that I used two of your Key Word phrases in the headline ("Amazing Widgets" and "Widgets That Sell") Are you starting to see the importance of your Key Words! Then add a photo or some text (content). Let's assume your adding a photo, there are several things to add to this "Photo" that with get you found by search engines. First off, Always use the "Alternate Text" feature that All elements offer. That means anything you import, that is a image, box, line, border, etc. has the "Alternate Text" feature. Typically you will right click on the object and a box will appear, click on "Properties" and then "Alternate Text" and add a description. This is where you will be able to add more relevance to your site by implementing Key Words. Don't get silly here, just put in something like " Our Amazing widgets are the Best selling Widgets around". Use a different description for each element that has an "Alternate Text" feature. You can add the "Alternate Text" to almost everything on your site, a box, a line, an image. Don't forget this, it is a vital part of SEO.So, now you have a Headline, a Photo and some content (text). This is the methodical part, Repeat this same process throughout your site. Every picture, every box, every imported item should have some sort of "SEO" implemented into it. This is all achieved by the basics of Folder Names, File names and utilizing the "Alternate Text" feature. It might sound like a lot, but after you get into the stream of things, it becomes as simple as signing your name on a letter. It's all about following the Search Engine Optimization rules of Engagement! Yes there is a lot more to SEO, but this will get you started on the right path to creating a web site that actually has Value and Relevance! After all, ALL search engines are about Value and Relevance. If you have no value, and no relevance (to the search) you don't exist!In my next article I will go over some more tips that can help to make your site is a "Relevant" site to the search engines, and push you even closer to Page One! Once again I have to say that I am not a "Web Guru" just a small business that has managed to not just Survive, but to Grow in this amazingly difficult economic environment. I have done all for Free (with the exception of web site hosting) and my web site is why I'm still growing my business, and not closing it!
