Search Engine Basics You Should Employ to Increase Website Traffic

Can your customers find your website? The majority of web surfers find what they are looking for through the major search engines. You may have the hottest looking website design, but if people can’t find your site, you’re losing money to the competition. On the other side, many sites which use website design poorly are also being found on major search engines. It’s questionable whether they can convert their visitors, but that’s another article. You need both, but here we focus on using the right content to get visitors to your website.

With all the different search engines out there utilizing different algorithms and page ranking systems, you may wonder how you can optimize for all of them. Well, there is no guarantee that you can. First, forget about the algorithms, they change so often it can be difficult to keep up. Instead focus on the keywords and key phrases people search for. If you’re targeting the wrong keywords, you’re wasting your time. According to OneStat, most searchers type in 2-word phrases, followed by 3-word phrases, and then 1-word (following that are 4-words and up in smaller percentages). And most of these searchers are on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL.

Do some keyword research to find what your customers are searching for. Target the customers who are actively searching for your exact product or service, and you will have an easier time converting them when they get to your website. When researching keywords, try finding keywords that have low competition, but high enough that you can get enough people to visit your website.

Copywriting for your website will be different than for any other medium you have. The copy needs to be rich with keywords, but it also needs to make sense and be valuable to your customers. Some think that making website copy for search engines is more important, others making it valuable for customers and customer-centric copy is more important. They are both very important. If your site is listed in search engines but the copy can’t convert your customers, it’s not working. If it’s all tailored to the customer, but search engines don’t see it, it’s not working. It’s a delicate balance.

Consider your marketing strategy and your product/service offerings. Tailor your website to follow your overall strategy. Remember to target the keywords people search that are specific to your products and services. The better qualified your customer base is, the more likely you can convert them to buy. Place the keywords in alt tags, meta tags (don’t worry so much about doing meta keywords, so few search engines use them it may not be worth the effort, but if you have them done it won’t hurt), and page copy (keyword links and headers help boost your rankings).

Rank your keywords by level of importance and use those more often (without going overboard obviously, i.e., website design website design website design). If you have a website up already, find what works and what doesn’t. Test it against the new research you’ve done.

Remember, analyzing keywords is not just a one-time thing, people’s searches can change and your competition will be reanalyzing their search engine strategies. Don’t let them take your traffic away.