In this Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Guide, you’ll learn 5 techniques to get targeted traffic from search engine results and some tips to prevent your website from being penalised.
Once you’ve applied what you’ve learned in this introduction to SEO you’ll have a head start to boosting your website traffic.
How to get FREE traffic to your website from the top 3 search engines Google, Yahoo! and Bing.
So Which Search Engines Matter?
There are 3 major players in the search engine market. Listed here below by market share:
- Google Sites (66.2%)
- Bing & Yahoo! Sites (29.3%)
Source: Hitwise ()
Five Steps to Get Free Traffic From Search Engines
Step #1: Keyword Research to determine which relevant search terms have the most queries per month in NZ.
Your website content needs to be relevant to what people are searching for.
If you sell women’s footwear, it might not be in your best interest to optimise for “Charlotte Dawson shoes” or even “shoes” by itself. Target leads, not traffic. Example. “best price on women shoes”, “women’s black heels”, “women running shoes” etc. If you have a local or regional business, add your location.
To learn what keywords are the most popular and what your competitors are using I recommend;
- Keyword Suggestion Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
- Competition Keywords Tool: www.seoprofiler.com and www.raventools.com
Step #2: Make Your Website Search Engine-Friendly
SEO is not some secret mathematic or scientific equation. In fact, everything you need to know about how the search engines interpret your website is available from all three of the major search engines.
Follow the rules and recommendations provided by each search engine and you’re on your way to higher keyword rankings. Here are the tools for each:
Simply submit your website to each of the tools above to get feedback on which keywords your website appears for, which websites are linking to yours, which links are broken, HTML errors and lots of other data the search engines want to share with you.
Step #3 – Scorecard Your Website
There are free tools available on the Internet that will analyse your website and give you a grade or benchmark. Check your website score every 6 months.
Here are my 2 favourite seo website tools you can use to scorecard your website and subsequent web pages:
- OpenSiteExplorer by SEOmoz: www.opensiteexplorer.org
- Marketing Grader by HubSpot: www.marketing.grader.com
Step #4 – Navigation and Internal Links
Did you know that images are read by search engines and translated to computer code (called binary)? 010101100…
Make sure you don’t use images to display important text like Home, About us, Services, Contact etc. Use text-based links for your navigation bar pages.
Images of yourself, products, services and people can now display on page one of Google Search. Make sure you name every image file with your business name and product or service keywords etc. You will also need to use the ALT (Alternate) meta tag for keywords.
Step #5 – External and Inbound Links
The next step in the keyword ranking process is what sites are linked to your website.
Every link to your website can be compared to a vote. The more trustworthy a page by the search engines, the more voting power each link on that page receives. Quality not quantity.
It’s very important to advertise your website in the top 20 Business Directories, Maps, Social Media sites, Forums and Blogs… = VOTES
The recommended way to get FREE traffic is to earn it with targeted keyword phrases and inbound links from authoritative websites.
If you would like me to review your website, and provide you with the steps to optimise your website SEO, visit my bio page Kent Routen.
