Designing and writing for people optimizes search results
If you’ve been on the Internet or involved in any kind of business development I’m sure you have heard the term, Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short. This is nothing new. Ever since search engines or directories have been on the Internet companies have wanted to be at the top of the listing.
I hate to use the term “early days” but the previous mindset regarding preparing a web site to be easily found by a search engine involved some back-end technical steps which at one time made sense when search engines and portals had more of a directory approach. The initial approach involved adding what is known as “meta tags” in the code of the web site and while some of these are still important to a degree modern search engine optimization is focused and hopefully will always be focused on the actual content in terms of text, images and other non design elements.
In terms of marketing this is actually a huge advantage in terms of competition, making updates known quicker and standing a better change at being found. Provided a web site has compelling content and is updated frequently.
What are some ways to to optimize, design and develop a web site so one can make frequent updates and provide compelling content? Here a few things to consider;
- Have a web site designed around a content management system - The makes it easier and faster for the non-designer, i.e. owner or employee of a company to update a web site without asking the web designer to make those updates.
- Incorporate a blog feature on your web site - The search engines love frequent content and writing on the topic related to your business on a frequent basis increases your search engine ratings
- Register your domain name for more than one year. The more years the better as search engines like Google rate domains with a longer registration period higher as it makes them look less, “fly by night.”
- Include words in your title tag you think people will use to search for a business like yours
- When writing, write naturally. Be sincere and don’t try to trick the system by stuffing keywords in the document.
These are just a few tips but they are ones they have helped us tremendously in the past few years to the point we rank on the first or second page of important search terms, many of which we have a lot competition.
Some SEO resources you may want to look at include;
- The Search Engine Academy of South Carolina
- The Wikipedia SEO entry
- Google’s page about working with SEO companies
Again these are just a few resources. We are constantly looking at ways to optimize web site for our clients and also our own business so we can not only get more customers but also practice what we preach and become more experienced to help others. If you are struggling with getting good search results for your web site contact us and find out what tools and resources we have that can help you be more successful. Of no one can guarantee you will be number one, that’s impossible and always changes but we can help you get achieve greater visibility amongst all the other choices out there. What are your SEO Success stories or concerns?
