There are lots of facets of your website’s design and Online Marketing that will help determine how successful you are in achieving a high Search Engine Placement. The most helpful methods for achieving your goal are what we refer to as “off page” methods, these will typically need the help of a Website Optimization Company. However, at this time we shall deal with some of the “on-page” changes that most website owners can easily implement to help in improving search engine placement.

For any website to be successful (at least in the sense of attracting visitors who want to be there), the site needs to be indexed by the search engines on the keywords and phrases that searchers are likely to use when searching for a site like yours. There would be little point in your business being listed in the yellow pages under “Delivery Companies” if what you actually do is Floristry. No one is going to find you when they look in the directory. Things are very similar on the web but without the strict categorisation of Yellow Pages to guide you. Let’s consider our Florist again.

If our beautifully designed floristry website talked endlessly about “spring blooms” within its text, it may well be indexed by Google etc. under the “heading” Spring Blooms. All fine and dandy… provided of course that searchers key the phrase “spring blooms” into the search box. If however, they search for “Florist”, in all likelihood our beautiful floristry website will probably not be listed in the results. The point is, if you want your website to be found, it really does have to be indexed correctly for you to have any likelihood of achieving a reasonable Search Engine Placement. The search engines will of course do that for you, but you do have to give them a lead. At a very basic level, if you think potential customers for your service will look for “florist in Bradford” then make sure you have that phrase prominent in your website.

To take that concept a little further, produce a whole range of search terms (or Keywords) that you think people would use when seeking out a website such as yours and include them in your site pages, taking care to ensure that the site reads well. Keep in mind here that by just adding keywords and phrases on your site certainly can’t guarantee that you’ll be found, but with luck you should be indexed correctly by the search engines. Whether you’ll be found during a search will be dependent on a number of issues including how much competition you have and how highly ranked your site is with those search engines. To make improvements to your ranking for various keywords, you’ll probably need to enlist the expertise of a Website Optimization Companywho can help you put togethera full Online Marketing plan.

Once you’ve decided on the most relevant keywords and phrases that potential customers will be looking for, try separating these into logical groups. Our Florist, for example might group together Valentines (Valentine Flowers, Valentine Roses, Valentine Gifts, Valentine Flowers Bradford), Occasions (Birthday Flowers, Anniversary Flowers, Thank You Gifts, Occasions Flowers Bradford) Funeral (Funeral Flowers, Funeral Sprays, Funeral Wreaths, Funeral Flowers Bradford) etc. etc. On the website, our florist would now do well to have three separate pages, one each for Valentines, Occasions and Funerals. Within the Valentines page text would now be mentioned the key phrases Valentine Flowers, Valentine Roses, Valentine Gifts and Valentine Flowers Bradford and so forth. I’m sure you can see how this could be applied to most websites.

By adopting this methodology, when the search engine reviews (or crawls) your site, as it will do on a regular basis, it should index each of your pages according to the content and title, provided that it all appears to match. In so doing, our florist should now have a chance of being listed in a search for “Valentines”. It goes without saying that, it is a long way from here to getting a front page Search Engine Placement, but at least you’ve made a beginning.

Apart from getting your keywords right, you’ll need to ensure that you (or your web designer) observe a few basic rules to ensure that each of your web pages is given its best possible chance with the search engine. Make sure that all the pages are named using the chosen keyword (e.g. Valentines.htm), has a unique title which includes a keyword and describes the page succinctly (e.g. Valentines Flowers, Roses and Gifts); then ensure that your chosen keywords are each used as

headings on the webpage (don’t worry; your web designer will know what how that’s done
.

Following these few basic rules will give your Online Marketing a try to achieve an improved Search Engine Placement; but bera in mind, to achieve a listing on page one of Google and other search engines, you’ll almost certainly need the help of a Search engine optimization company.