SEO FOR ALL

So you have a web site, great isn’t it as you sit back and look at your own little bit of world on the internet. It's been up and running some time now, but you have a problem, you aren’t getting many hits and you want to know what you can do about it. Course there are programmes you can buy to get your website higher in the search engines, but have you seen the cost of those things? They can cost £200 plus. Not something that most of us want to splash out on, when all we wanted to do was share a little bit of a hobby with the world, or sell a few items for pocket money. Spending hundreds of pounds seems to be over kill when more than likely the website itself didn’t cost that much in the first place.
So is there an answer.. well yes there is and it doesn’t cost you a penny. all it takes is a little time and a little insight to how the search engines work.
I openly admit that I’m no expert, what i have learned i have done so through hard work and a lot of sifting through the jargon that can be found out there to help us. Annoyingly though, most are trying to sell you something so your not sure what to believe, if what they are saying is all hype trying to sell you their answer. I’m not trying to sell you anything here,im just sharing with you what i know, in the hope that you too will get the traffic you desire to your website.
So, enough waffle, lets get down to the facts.

1) Did you know that the name of your website url is very important. to get the search engines to rank you high, you must have your keyword in the title. Lets give an example here of what i mean. Let’s take a website that sells new age gifts, let’s call it www.spiritcharms.co.uk nice name, and seems to convey the essence of the products. trouble is the name doesn’t tell you what they are or sell. A new age gift shop should have the words new age gift shop in the url title. if it doesn’t then the search engines mark that against you. A good example of good naming is
a website store that sells Gothic item, call it www.thegothicstore.co.uk and you are laughing, the search engines love that. so it is very important to choose your name carefully. it is worth it to change your url if it isn’t going that well, they are very cheap now. Co.uk only costs around £5 for two years if you shop around. Think carefully about your Url does it say what you are or do???

2) Content content content... now this is something else that is important. the search engines love what they call "RICH CONTENT". So what does that mean? well simply put, lots and lots of meaningful text for the search spiders to get their teeth into. Don’t just stick a few lines on your front page and fill it up with pictures,video,flash content. The search engines cant read that content and don’t like it too much. also change the content often, at least twice a week. The search engines seem to know when you have changed something and come to have a look, which of course is good for your indexing.

Don’t forget to include your keywords in your rich text content, but be very careful not to over do it. The densities of your Keywords are very important, too much and you will get penalized, leave a keyword out of your content and you will get penalized for that too.

3) Links, now links are a biggy when it comes to your rankings. some say this is the most important factor of them all when it comes to the search engine ranking you in a good position. Not just any old links though. The best links are those that relate to what your own website is about. So if you sell grass seed, then good links would have grass seed in the title of the website you are linking to. Failing that then the next best thing is websites that are closely related grass seed. Garden supplies, lawnmowers ect.

Don’t just link to anybody and everybody, the search engines do penalize you if your links are scattered about all over the place, stay away from link farms, and shady or banned sites too.

4) Speaking of content, did you know that the search engines rank you for the simplistic text; they rank you higher the less education you need to read it. Yep that’s right. If you have lots of big word on your site that you need a degree to understand because you think it makes your site look good, then think again. simple is best...

Now there are a few tips for you to be getting on with and don’t cost you a penny to implement....

Good luck

Stephen



I am a webmaster of two sites. www.spiritcharms.co.uk and www.thegothicstore.co.uk. i have owned a few websites over the years and have learned that the biggest stumbling block for most people is the search engines and how they rank you. most people dont want to splash out hundreds on SEO utilities, me included, so i have become dedicated to make it simple for ordinary folk like you and me, to understand the basics of SEO, and try to teach people the basics.
http://www.spiritcharms.co.uk