How do you get to the top of the search engines without spending a fortune on search engine optimisation?

Well, there is no magic formula that will shoot your site to the top - but here are some key techniques that will help dramatically.

1) Use meta tags

This is so simple and yet plenty of web pages do not have these filled in. Without meta tags, you are relying on the search engine to correctly determine what the page is about. Include meta tags and you’ll begin to help the search engine index your pages.

2) Use image alt tags

This is the text that appears when you hover over images and photographs. Again, plenty of sites miss this or use some generalised text eg. ‘photo of building’. This is no good. The alt tag text can be used to increase the keyword relevancy of the page. Careful use of the keyword phrase across the alt tags will encourage the search engine to rank your page higher.

3) Be focused

If you try and make your web page cover too many keyword phrases, you’ll find it difficult (if not impossible) to get ranked high enough for each keyword phrase. Instead, use focused keyword pages that have been specifically optimised to drive targeted traffic to your site.

4) Use the filenames

Search engines can read the filename of the page. Use this with your keyword phrase to increase relevancy. For example, don’t call it ‘index.htm’, call it ‘gardening-tools.htm’. Very easy to do and yet hardly anyone does it.

5) Include geographic keywords

You can add a location to your keywords to help focus the search. For example, ‘gardening tools worcester’. This type of search is becoming more popular with users and you’ll find good traffic if you try.

6) Lots of keyword phrases

It’s quick just to think up the keyword phrases and convince yourself that you know what the user will search for. In reality you will be 20 to 50% of the way there. Instead, take advantage of the powerful keyword generation tools available to you and generate a comprehensive list of keyword phrases.

7) Longer beats shorter

Short (ie. one word) keywords are much more difficult to work with. Firstly, the user knows that searching for a one word keyword gets wide results. Which is not that useful to them. Secondly, the competition for these keywords is usually high making it much harder to reap rewards. Instead, use multi-word keyword phrases to target the traffic and reduce the competition.

Implement these simple techniques and you’ll see a major improvement in your search engine rankings.

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