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You have worked all day. The kids are home from school, dinner is done, and the cleanup is over. Finally you have a moment to sit down and relax when all of a sudden your teenager remembers a research project they have due in school tomorrow. Quickly, you go to the computer and type in the subject hoping for quick and informative results. You hit the “Enter” key and up pops all sorts of different sites that relate to the topic.
As a website owner, you wonder, how does one get their website to appear in the world of search engines? Welcome to the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
In a nutshell Search Engine Optimization is the improvement of traffic and website hits to your site by increasing the opportunities for the search engines to pull from your site, whether that be through images, keywords, local searches, or even business specific searches.
One way to accomplish this is to hire a Search Engine Optimizer. This individual or company, will review your site for content, build keyword searches, establish a website development plan, and help provide location specific statistics. Services are often times expensive, and require ongoing maintenance; an expense that many small business owners cannot afford.
WordPress to the Rescue!
WordPress offers their users many different plugins that can increase their visibility and presence on the Internet. However, even using this platform there are still a few key rules to search engine optimization that every website owner should know and implement.
1. Watch Your Titles – Front running words receive the most attention in a search string. Also, research shows that the typical user reads a search result page from top to bottom, then left to right. The closer your keywords are to the beginning of your title, the more weight and attention they will receive in a search.
2. Increase Your Speed – Have you ever noticed that the links in the beginning of a search engine result load faster than those near the end? This is because search engines weigh the length of time it takes a site to load in their crawling for matches. Increase your site’s loading speed by removing un-needed code, slacking down on the video, increasing cache speed, etc.
3. Tag and Connect – Do you have related articles on other blogs or sites? By tagging each of the posts with the same or similar keywords, you increase your web presence. Also, since pages are weighted heavier than posts, consider creating a page that links all the similar articles or blogs together with a “Read More”, or similar link at the bottom of the page.
4. Keep Your Traffic – While sidebars are an attractive way to lure readers to your site, by offering them a link and presence; they actually can hurt more than they can help. Links out of your site mean just that; the opportunity for your reader to leave and not browse your site further.
These tips will enhance your site presence using any website platform. The advantage of WordPress is that it supports several functionalities that other platforms do not, including optimized descriptions, tagging, related posts, and defining titles. It provides ease of use, allowing the small business owner to customize their site and build an online business presence through search engine optimization without having to spend tons of time learning the ins and outs of SEO or hiring someone else to do it.
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