Getting more traffic is a top priority for many webmasters. If you’re one of them, you should definitely look into SEO, or search engine optimization. This is the collective term for all the different techniques you can use to get your site ranked more highly on search engine results pages.
Austin SEO: Where to Start Cultivating Better Search Rankings
Getting started is easy, and you can rapidly build up enough SEO experience to make a real difference in how your site ranks. Although it’s not certain how much of an impact off-site links have to your page ranking, no one can deny that the effect is certainly positive. These links are more valuable when they come from other high-traffic sites, so it’s a good idea to cultivate link-exchange relationships with webmasters who run popular sites. Make this a continual process; devote a little time regularly to building up your link network.
Since links from high-traffic sites are a good thing, links from social media hubs like Facebook or Twitter are especially valuable. Make sure that you let your visitors easily share your site with friends through social sites. All of these sites have sharing widgets available. You can simply plug their code into your own pages to produce a “follow” button that’s familiar and useful to your visitors.
You can also build off-site links by sharing your content with directory sites. Most of these sites are interested in “articles.” Never fear; the content you’re already creating for your site can be transformed into stand-alone articles with minimal effort. Once you do this, you can get your articles listed on directories that will provide a complimentary backlink to your site.
On Page Ranking Factors for Austin SEO
In terms of changes you can make to your own site, the biggest overarching one is to devote some time to your sitemap. You may have noticed that few sites make their maps available to visitors any more; don’t assume that this means they don’t have them! An accurate, up-to-date sitemap can be an immense help to search engines when they index your site. Update your sitemap manually or use web design software that will generate a fresh one automatically.
To get the best results from your optimization efforts, you need to concentrate on a selection of search keywords that reflect your site’s core focus. These keywords should appear in critical places throughout your site, in both the content and the code. Each of your pages should, for instance, include a relevant keyword in its title (flagged with the HTML title tag). You also need to include your keywords in your content itself. Don’t overdo it, though; if keyword density climbs too high, search engines get suspicious.
To elaborate on that final point, while you want keywords in your content, you should never make including them your top priority. It’s more important for your content to be sensible and useful to your visitors than to stuff a few more keywords into it. Putting SEO performance above your visitors’ experience of your site is putting the cart well before the horse. Hopefully, this article has given you some decent suggestions you can use to start optimizing your website. Don’t be afraid to jump into the middle of the field and start getting your hands dirty. Experience is the best teacher you can have, and the more familiar you get with SEO techniques, the easier you’ll find them to use.
