Do’s and Don’ts for Website SEO
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
SEO – it seems that every business owner wants to know about it; and it’s with good reason! Search Engine Optimization, or SEO simply means making your site as search engine friendly as possible so that your site shows up in search results. That’s what business owners want, right? What good is having a website if no one can find it? With that said, here are a few tips on the do’s and don’ts of Search Engine Optimization.
First of all, use your real business phone number spelled out in numbers on your home page. Do not use vanity numbers, which use a tagline or your business name in letters. Although using words to spell out a phone number may have made it easy to remember 10 years ago, most people are using cell phones now and many do not attach letters to numbers. Keep in mind that you want your customers and search engines to easily find you and your contact information. Search engines will read your phone number too, so do not use and image as the phone number. Use the numbers, plain and simple.
Next, update your page often when it is appropriate. What I mean by that, is if you have a sale on advertised on your page that expired 2 months ago, take it off and replace it with current deals. Your customers will not only become frustrated by invalid sale, but they will get the idea that your business is not doing very well or is not on task. On that same note, make sure your page copyright date is current for the same reason in regard to search engines. An old copyright date says “this site is stale”.
Thirdly, Flash is a great tool for embellishing your website, but do not create entire pages out of Flash. The reason for this is that Flash is not search engine friendly. Search engines read the html, so that is what your site needs to be primarily coded in. Using Flash is great and adds visual appeal, but use it as a seasoning rather than the main course.
Fourth, use your links productively! That’s right; get the most from search engines by linking relevant text to relevant text. Do not use “click here” as your link text. You’re wasting your time and energy when you could be linking “5 tips for search engine optimization”. When users see link text, they know what to do. You don’t need to tell them to “click here”. Tell your users and the search engines exactly what it is they are clicking with a descriptive, keyword rich link.
Lastly, your site should include a sitemap and it should be submitted to the search engines. Your sitemap should be created using descriptive links, easily read and neatly laid out in table form in the footer of your webpage. Make sure your text is easily readable in a contrasting color to your background.
SEO is an important part of your business web design. Remember that your page is not only being read by thousands of people (possibly millions), but by search engines as well. Get your page noticed and ranked by utilizing SEO your best advantage.
