Search Engine Optimization - Make your site visible on search engines for FREE

Remember that age-old question: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Similarly, your website might look great, but if no one can find it through search engines, it’s not doing you any good.

Search engine optimization is one of the most important things you can do to ensure your website receives lots of relevant traffic.

How does search engine optimization work?

Search engine optimization is the process of configuring your website to be search engine friendly. A properly optimized website tells search engines what your business is about. It allows search engines to understand the key words and phrases of your business and list your website in its search results pages based on what you communicated.

The easier you make it for search engines to understand what your business is about, the more likely your site will appear in higher positions in their search results.

6 search engine optimization tips to improve your site’s visibility:

1. Use keywords in your URLs – If you can, change your site’s URLs to include terms that match the keywords you are trying to optimize for. For example, let’s say Ann’s Shampoo Company wants to optimize for the word “hair color.” Instead of building a page’s URL to be structured as http://www.annsshampoo.com/cid=45894, rewrite the URL to contain the main keyword, such as http://www.annsshampoo/hair-color.html
2. Maximize keyword density – Optimize for two to four keyword phrases per page. Use the selected keyword phrases multiple times on the page, within reason. Be careful not to turn your content into spam.
3. Use keywords in your images – Unlike humans, search engine spiders can’t see images; they only see text. So for each image that you have on your page, it’s important that you also include an “alt tag,” which is like a text description of the image. It’s an important way to work more keywords into your page and make your page more visible.
4. Link to internal pages – If there are a significant number of links on each page connecting to other pages on your site, it makes it easier for search engine spiders to crawl the content of your site and index more pages. For example, if you have a site about fresh produce and you have a page for tomatoes, avocados and cucumbers, you should have a link to the tomatoes page and the avocados page when you are on the cucumber page.
5. Use keywords in HTML code – Meta tags are keywords that are hidden to the user but show up in the HTML code. H1 tags are used in HTML code for headlines. Search engine spiders look at both to determine what a page is about. That’s why it’s crucial to include your keywords in your headlines, as well as in the body text.
6. Avoid Flash – Flash may make your site look spiffy, but Flash files cannot be read by search engines. Use Flash sparingly.

Where do people search?

There were 14.3 Billion searches conducted in March 2009, according to comScore. That’s a lot of searches! Where did they search?

	63.7%
	20.5%
	8.3%
	3.8%
	3.7%

Vance Marketing Solutions’ Search Engine Optimization Services

Vance Marketing Solutions offers search engine optimization services to help your site improve its organic search rankings. We are the SEO company that understands the nuances of search engine optimization and get your site listed on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

With more than 80 percent of all web traffic coming from search engines, it’s crucial that search engine optimization is a cornerstone of your online business.

Even if you’ve done a little research on keywords in the past, keyword popularity is always changing, so it’s important to partner with an SEO company that has SEO services to help you stay on top of the latest keyword trends in your marketplace.

Our SEO services include extensive keyword research and recommendations about how to improve your Meta tags, H1 tags, image alt tags, site structure, navigation structure, URL structure and link building campaign.

By developing a strong search engine optimization strategy as your marketing weapon of choice, you’ll experience an unmatched level of visibility, sales and brand recognition for your business.