Better Search Engine Placement

Whether you’re Internet savvy or not, you probably know the one thing that will help your website more than anything is better search engine placement. How you’ll achieve that or even who to ask to help may be a less clear concept, though. Search engines are fickle, which makes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a constant effort to keep your site in the top search results. Many business owners simply don’t have the time to do the necessary research and end up hiring SEO specialists to help them stay afloat.

The Basic Formula for Success

Better search engine placement isn’t a cut and dry science, but there are several items that search engines are always looking for when they rank sites. Usability is a primary concern, Google wants to service your customers as much as you do. There’s no way to get top billing overnight, but if you’re constantly working toward top rankings over time, you’ll be surprised how quickly your site gets into the public eye. Here are some of the more important components for better rankings:

High Quality Content. There’s nothing like high quality content to attract random visitors looking for advice, new product information or general articles related to your business and products. Google knows this and has updated its algorithms to be able to tell good content from bad. It’s really that smart. Your articles, blogs and even product descriptions need to be unique, written in error-free English and accessible for your audience.

Regular Updates. No longer is the park it and forget it mentality of web design in fashion. In fact, this could be the reason why you’ve lost so much ground in the rankings. Search engines want to see that you’re still actively engaged with your page, and you can show them you are by publishing blogs once or twice a week and updating your product catalog now and again.

Site Architecture. The way your site’s built matters, too. From the tags to the structure of the pages, it’s all about making your site as accessible as possible. Make sure all your links are good, that none of your pages go to nowhere and that the whole thing loads as quickly as possible. The faster your site loads, the more of it Google can index at one time, which is a huge help to your search engine placement.

Site Security. Secure sites signaled by the use of pages starting with “https” are getting a lot of attention from Google. Security is a big deal these days, and Google is using your site’s ability to keep everything safe as a ranking signal.

In-bound and Out-bound Links. Both in-bound and out-bound links matter a lot to Google. In fact, your search engine ranking can be made or destroyed by linking to the wrong sites. Spammy links or those you’ve purchases in hopes of getting a better search engine placement need to go right now. Better to be linked to by a few really reputable sites than a hundred sites that are a waste of Internet real estate.

Keyword Usage. Keywords aren’t dead, but they’ve changed a lot since the early days of the Internet. Search engines are looking for readability on your site, so if they find a lot of keywords, even the hidden ones, your rankings will drop or you could incur a penalty. Better to stick to intelligent usage of a couple of good keywords or give organic SEO a try. Ultimately, better search engine placement is the result of your efforts to make your site as useful and accessible as possible.

Integrating Social Media and limiting the use of flashy graphics that don’t add anything to the conversation are other ways you can increase the utility of your site, earn more hits and in-bound links and ultimately increase sales. It may seem like a tedious process to go from page 30 in the search engine rankings to somewhere in the first page or two, but once you’ve earned your stripes it’s much easier to keep your ranking high.

Let us show you just how painless hiring SEO services can be — we’ll provide you with a plan for increasing your search engine ranking and your sales and ensure that your plan stays on track.