What’s the use of creating a website if it does not help bring new prospects and customers for your business? There is literally no point spending time, effort and money in building a website if it does not add much value to your business. You prospects and customers are already searching for products, services and solutions using search engines like Google and Bing. If your website is not appearing in search results for such search queries on these search engines, then you are actually losing business. Thankfully, you can optimize your website and make it appear in those search results. With a little bit of on page and off-page search engine optimization, you can make your website search engine friendly and then it will start appearing in the search results of major search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo.
I recently learnt about the rank and rent, which according to Diggity Marketing is a strategy where a site owner builds a website, optimizes and nurtures the site so it can rank well in search results, and then rents it out for revenue generation.
All I am trying to say is that – A properly optimized website can surprisingly help you grow your business and therefore you should take it seriously.
One can argue that instead of putting continuous efforts in search engine optimization, a business owner can use the pay per click advertising (PPC) to get new customers quickly and cost-effectively. It’s true that you can get quick customers by running a PPC campaign. However, you should not forget that to run a PPC campaign, you have to continuously spend money to keep running the campaign.
However, when you optimize your website to rank well, you don’t have to pay fees to the search engine. Once your website starts appearing for a particular search query, you will get free traffic and visitors to the website. You don’t have to pay a penny every time a user clicks on the search results and visits your website or places an order. That’s the advantage; you put in effort, grow a website and then continue reaping the benefits forever.
Basic SEO techniques for beginners
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a continuous process and therefore you have to spend some time optimizing your website and creating fresh new contents. SEO process has evolved greatly and therefore it may be the right time to start optimizing your website.
There are many techniques being used and suggested by SEO experts, but if you have just built a website and you are getting started with search engine optimization, then there is no point discussing advanced SEO techniques. Just start with the basics, continue learning and then implement those SEO techniques to boost the search ranking of your website.
Here’re a few of the quick and simple SEO techniques that you can use to get started with basic SEO of your website. And as I said, just follow these basics techniques and then continue improving on it and you should be fine.
1. Firstly, you will need to find the keywords, or key phrases for your products/business. Here are several tools available for keyword research such as the Google keywords tool. Try and use 2-3 letters keywords to begin with, for example if you offer Interior design services then your keywords could be ‘home interior design’. And if you want to mention the place where you’ll be running your business mention the place’s name, for example- if you offer your services in Kolkata, mention ‘Kolkata Interior designer‘.
2. Place at least 2 keywords or key phrase in the title text, followed by your brand name (specially if your brand is new) like “Interior design services in kolkata by ABC interior, Call for a free quote.” Ideally, the title should not be more than 70 characters.
3. Another important place where you must have some keywords are in the Meta Description, that Google, and other search engines displays in their search results. Use this to explain about your products/service in little more detail, than the title. Use keywords here as well, just like you used in the title. Meta description should be within 150 characters.
4. You may use keywords tags as well. Goggle won’t read/accept it, but many other sites accepts it. Reminding you again, be specific and put the keywords and phrases correctly.
5. Other things that you must pay attention is to the proper uses of HTML tags. Use alt tags in your image, title tags for all the links and lastly, ensure there is no broken link in your website. You must always have links to the privacy policy and terms page on your website.
6. Create a Sitemap.xml file. There are many free tools that you can use to generate xml sitemap page.
7. Register on Google web-masters, and other web-master tools, and then submit your website, as well as the xml sitemaps.
Over to you
As a business owner, you should never underestimate the power of a truly optimized website. A properly optimized website can help bring prospects and customers for your business to grow. Even if it’s a continuous process, it’s worth the effort because you can continue reaping the benefits for a long time.
I have already shared a few of the basic steps to optimize a new website. If you feel the need, you can also take help from professional search engine experts and digital marketing companies near you. Do whatever it takes, but just don’t ignore search engine optimization as it offers huge long term benefits.
What else are you doing to optimize your website?
