Optimizing Your Website for the Search Engines

Once you have chosen applicable keyword phrases (see previous blog item) that have a high search volume, but a corresponding low number in the "competition" column, the next important search engine optimization (SEO) tip is that you can now incorporate these key words and phrases to optimize your website. Website optimization is one of the most important things you can do to make your website more visible to the search engines.

When optimizing any website the goal should be to choose one or two of your top keyword phrases for each page in your website. You can make your choices by matching the subject matter of your web pages to the keyword phrases.

Then you can plug your keyword phrases into the appropriate place on each web page. The appropriate places are your title tag (approx 70 characters long), your meta description tag (approx 100 characters long), your headline or page title (preferably as an H2 tag), in the first sentence of your body copy, somewhere in the middle of your body copy, and in the last sentence of your body copy.

You can also use keyword phrases in the alt image tags -- and you get bonus points for using your keyword phrase as link text. Repeat this for each page on your website. Just remember not to duplicate tags, or exact content, because with anything you do on the Internet, the search engines will only count content one time, so you won’t get credit for duplications.

Applicable keyword phrases can also be used to guide your website content. This means you can use your keyword phrases to define what your website content should be about -- one web page per keyword phrase. So, while looking over your keyword phrases, figure out those that you already have content for, which ones you need to write content for, and then add content pages for those keyword phrases where you are lacking content.

Ultimately, good search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing will gain better search engine visibility.