You’ve gathered your information, taken pictures, nagged your employees to death to write biographies and dress nice for the website photo. You’ve spent hours searching the Web for the sites, styles that you want, found examples of the good… and the bad. You’ve chosen to spend your hard earned money to promote your business online, to bring it into the 21st century, but WHAT IF no one sees it? What if your site just sits there and is never used? That’s what we’re here to discuss.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and is one of the single most important keys to your website’s success or failure. The most common question that I get when speaking to new clients is “How do I get to the top of Google?”, and the short answer is “How much are you willing to spend and how much time do you have?” Remember that you are competing against the rest of the world for that prime listing. There are some cheap, or even FREE, tips to help get you higher on those search engines.

Simply put, the companies that typically are at the top of search engines are there because they’re the biggest, most popular, and have the most active websites, the rest of us are just fighting for their scraps. Just as in any other endeavor, getting to the top takes time, effort, and dedication. That doesn’t mean that you can’t work to get higher on that list and make your site active, popular, and an asset to your business or organization. So, here are some simple, and cheap, tips that you can do to help ensure that your site is more visible on that big ol’ WORLD Wide Web.

Tip #1 – Link Exchanges

Search engines send programs throughout the Net, called “webcrawlers” or “spiders”, to “crawl” the Net and make a list of keywords, websites, and pages. Every website that links to your site is a path that a spider can use to get to your site, and simply put, the more spiders that visit your site, from more different paths, the more important your site will appear. So find other websites willing to link to your site. Depending on the website, it can be free and it’s easy. Are you a member of a local chamber of commerce, Rotary Club, Better Business Bureau, or any other professional organizations? If so, then ask to have your site linked from their website. Also, the more popular the site that’s linking to you, the more important your site will appear.

Tip #2 – Be Descriptive

Provide your designer, hopefully me, with key words and phrases to use in your site. Remember, your designer is a technical expert, not an expert on cars, furniture, skydiving, Sasquatch hunter, so it’s your job to make sure that your designer is using proper terminology. Spiders also use these words and terms when indexing your site, so these will be the words that will provide those searching for your site with the best results. Key words are fine, but simply putting those key words in your meta tags without using them throughout your page can not only be useless, it can actually cause you to be penalized by search engines. Keywords that don’t appear in the body of your page are seen as keyword stuffing, and are frowned upon. So, make sure to include your key words and phrases a few times in the title, body, and description of your page.

Tip #3 – Be Honest

If you’re a car dealer, don’t cram your website keywords with terms such as “prom dresses”. I know what you’re thinking. “Nothing like a new car to make senior prom perfect”, but if your site really has nothing to do with prom dresses, then stuffing those terms into your site keywords isn’t a good idea. Search engine programmers have caught on to this trick, and will actual penalize your site if they detect it.

Tip #4 – Keep Your Site Fresh

Why would I come back to your site if it never changes? If the information is outdated, or has been the same for five years, what do you have to offer me? If you’re going to use your website, then make simple changes from time to time. Use it to advertise your upcoming sales, important dates, new products, interesting articles. If your budget doesn’t allow you to pay your designer for updates each month, then at least have them add a blog to the site that you can post to on your own, or add an RSS feed with related articles, which will offer continual updates without constant maintenance.

Tip #5 – Offer Free Stuff on Your Site

Having a sale? Place a coupon on your site that customers must print in order to get a discount. Offer prizes on your site. Anything to get people looking to your site for deals, new info, and something to talk about.

Tip #6 – Use Free Web Tools

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn are popular for a reason. They’re free and there are millions of people who frequent these sites. Create a Facebook page and link to your website. Get people to link to your page, then use it to promote your business. It’s not recommended that you use this as your sole Web presence, because people rarely use Facebook to shop online, but using social networking sites to promote your business can’t hurt, so make the most of it!!

All of these tips can make your site more active, which will in turn, get you higher on those all important search engines.

And as always, if you have any questions or are ready to plan or improve your site, give us a call at 859-325-6956, or e-mail us at damian@laymondesigns.com.