Source : http://www.etheeseoservices.co.uk/how-to-do-seo/
Websites without traffic (visitors) are not useful to have. Either those websites are commercial or for non-profit purposes; if there is no visitors, the message that the website tries to convey cannot be communicated or spread out to a particular community or the world. Getting more traffic(visitors) is the main intention of every website owners (or web masters). There are various ways to get visitors to a website. Such as referral traffic (from other websites), social media traffic (from Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ and etc), direct traffic (visits by offline marketing like news paper advertisements, radio/television advertisements), organic traffic (traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing), paid traffic (traffic from cost per click services like Google adwords, Bing adwords) and etc. Even though all these methods are existing to get traffic to a website, usually search engines used to drive more traffic to a website (this is true for many websites, but there are websites still survive without traffic from search engines). So, on this article, let’s discuss on how to drive more traffic from search engines (specially from the most popular search engine Google) and how to make your website to be search engine friendly.
How we are getting traffic from search engines like Google?
Usually people used to search on search engines to find out the sites to get their needs satisfied/fulfilled. Based on the query that is entered into the search engines, the search engines scan their own index of websites which are related to given query by its users and filters out and rank the websites (URLs) that are more related to given query by its user. In that way, user of a search engine can enter into your site. So, now question is, how we can get a website on top ranked on search engines to get more visitors? As well as, what is the volume of search for the particular keyword/key phrase?
Usually, many people just think of a keyword and start optimising their website for that keyword. But those people may not have any ideas of the volume of search for the keyword that they are trying to optimise. This leads to get frustration at the end as they forget to estimate/filter the keywords with good search volume. So, it is clear that, we should do a better keyword research and find the keywords that are related to a website and the keywords that have more search volume on search engines. That is kind a base for a building. The base should be strong, then only the building may last for years. Now the question arises, how to do keyword research? There are many FREE and paid keyword research tools available online. Like Google adwords tool (Gives details of Google only), SemRush.com and etc. Using such tools experienced SEO consultants can suggest the best keywords that has enough search volume. Once the keyword research is completed and better keywords are identified, next thing to focus is On-page search engine optimisation.
There are many things to be considered during on-page search engine optimisation. Such as optimising title of web pages, meta descriptions and meta keywords. On those days, many people used to their target keywords on the title of the website and get better ranks on Google. Day by day, Google starts to become intelligent, Google gives penalty to the websites that do over optimisation. So, It is always highly recommended to have your main keyword on your title as well as your brand. Branding your own website is important. For a website that offers home remodeling services in London, the title may be
Harens Home Remodelling London – example.com – example phone number
(Where Haren – The brand (the company name), Home Remodelling London – Main Keyword, example.com – the url of the website, example phone number – phone number of the business)
The meta descriptions which is the short description of what the website is about and what it offers. The meta keywords may include the keyword that website is going to optimised (meta keyword is not such important these days, but it is better to have at least 3-4 keywords on it).
Other than these basic on-page SEO settings, a website should have well written unique content. The content should not have more keywords. It should be easy to read and understand by its users. So, that my convert the visitors into customers. Having more rich (that is more words) and quality content is easy to get ranked well on Google rather than a thin-content (less content) website.
Apart from content, there should be proper internal link building structure to be practised to make the website more SEO friendly. Well experienced and skilled SEO experts (example : etheeseoservices.co.uk) can advice on how to do internal link building structure of a website. Internal link building structure helps search engines like Google to study the website easily and navigate without any issues. Not only for search engines, it makes ease of access to the users of website as well. Also, If there are images used in the website, those should be added with alt attribute; to optimise those images. The 404 page (the page to display where the page that user requested is not available) should be designed to be user friendly messages on it and to be loaded when the requested page is not available on the website.
Having sitemap, contact us, about us, privacy policy, terms and conditions pages are too adding more authority for a website. As per some survey reports, most of the visitors of a website (who are really looking for something) usually check out “about us” page of website. Other than the above very important things to be considered under on-page SEO settings, there are few more things as well.
Once the on-page SEO settings is completed. The next focus will be towards link building (Off-page SEO). That is getting links back to the website. There many methods are being used by search engine optimisation consultants for this. Here is a list of few methods that are being used.
Writing quality content about your website theme and post those articles on different article directories, press releases, blogging sites and etc.
Forums postings and get links through signature links
Blog commenting
Social bookmarking
Link reciprocals (Link exchanges) – Excess link exchanges is not recommended and Google had penalized many sites for this reason during its penguin and panda updates.
Guest blogging
Directory submissions
Paid links – Google and some other search engines does not recommend these kind of links
There are various factors to be considered during getting backlinks for a website. Here are some guidelines.
Search engines like Google recommends natural link building. To do so, the backlinks should be combination of dofollow and nofollow.
The backlinks should be gathered using many methods of getting links (may be some combination of above listed link building methods)
The backlinks should be earned using different anchor text. To avoid over anchor text optimisation penalty. (For this reason, Google penalized many websites during its Google panda and penguin updates) – It is recommended to use the main keywords, domain name, URL, Click here, Check out, Visit and etc as the anchor text.
The backlinks should be gained regularly.
Lots of backlinks should not be created with short period of time. The duration should be expanded over months.
I hope these basic things on how to optimise a website for search engines help you to get some ideas about search engine optimisation that you have to have before starting you SEO project whether you are working by yourselves or hiring a SEO consultant to do so.
