Doing the basics in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to promote your website

So you’ve got a website…

Websites, not unlike retail shop fronts, need to be placed in high traffic areas to gain walk in customers browsing for the products or services that you sell. Is your website in the equivalent of a busy shopping mall or is it stuck out in the middle of the Urewera National Park where only the brave few may stumble upon it?

If you have invested time and money in creating a potential online sales tool otherwise known as a website then you owe it to yourself to try and make that investment work for you. I know for a fact that any business owner who spends money on a marketing activity which yields little or no return will quickly move away from such a an exercise. Yet so many New Zealand Businesses have websites which as a sales and marketing tool do very little to add to their bottom line.

If you have a website for your business then you need to promote it online and the methods in how that is done are not out of reach for even the smallest business. Promoting your website in search engines initially requires search engine optimization (SEO) and done right will definitely help you gain more online visibility, generate more visitors and ultimately sales.

When we talk about SEO it is predominantly categorised into two parts.

1. On-page optimization (Stuff that is done on your website)
2. Off-page optimization (Stuff that is done outside of your website)

A combination of on-page and off-page optimization is essential as they are synchronistic parts of the overall search engine optimisation strategy.

In general, on-page optimization on-page optimization refers to the factors which can be controlled by changing coding and text of your webpage or website. On-Page Optimisation is directly related to the content and structure of the website.

On-page optimization is broken down as follows:

Keyword Analysis:

Keywords are your key indicators of what words are people searching in relation to your industry, products or services and how many people search for those in New Zealand. Many businesses claim to rank number 1 in Google for a particular keyword or words but get few visitors. More often than not the primary reason is because nobody searches for that keyword. Ranking #1 in Google is of little value unless what you rank #1 in Google for is a keyword or words that lots of people are searching for frequently.

Title tag Optimization

The Title Tag is an HTML code that shows the words that appear in the Title bar at the top of web browser. Title Tag is an important Tag amongst other SEO options. It communicates the theme of the webpage for human and search engines gather information about website.

Meta tags Optimization

Meta tags are generally design for the help of search engines to know what their site was about. In all Meta tags, Meta description tags are still in use. This tag is an HTML code that allows you to give a short and brief outline of your web page content.

Modifying Headings

Heading tags (H1 through to H6) are given more weight by search engines than regular body text. So we should use them wisely to strengthen the page's overall keyword theme. Among all heading tags H1 tag is the most important. It should be placed at the top of content so that visitors can easily understand what the content of the page is about.

Image Optimization

Images play major role for attracting visitors. Website is having eye catchy images help to increasing visitor's attention to your website. But many search engines including Google, Yahoo and Bing are unable to read images. So we need to put alternate text for image. Also reduce image size so web page can easily load.

Content Optimization

Well optimized content always help your web site to get top position in Search engines. Content is the king. Every search-engine spider always tries to store as much as new content in their database. So use wisely your targeted keywords in content.

Internal Linking

If you do it then right internal linking can improve your website usability. By linking to relevant content to your readers so it becomes more effective than your main navigation.

Hopefully this will give you a brief idea about importance of on-page optimization in SEO.