SEO-tips-2010

Ten Questions to Ask Your Website in 2010

Start Your Website Off with SEO Tips for the New Year

So you have a website. Currently, you are showcasing your products and services. The site is beautifully designed and you’re excited about it! As well, you should be. However, are people finding your site? Is it coming up in the search engines and can you tell how well your site is performing? If you answered no to any of these questions, you may need to tweek your site a bit to get better traffic, resulting in higher ROI for your website. Below are the top ten SEO tips for 2010 from Buzzhound that you should know, and implement, on your site:

SEO Tip #1. Does the web recognize your site?
When you type your website url in the search query box, does it show up in the organic or natural search results? Try searching for your site on your top products and services. Do you see your website? If not, you’ll want to make sure and check out the rest of the seo tips listed in our blog. These simple steps can help your site gain rankings in the search engines and increase opportunities for conversions.

SEO Tip #2. Are you registered with the search engines?
Typically, you should submit your site to the search engines to help the spiders find your site. This can be done through the webmaster tools in the major search engines, like Google, Yahoo and Bing – and it’s free! You just need to have an account and then add your site. You’ll want to make sure and add the sitemap files to your site and verify them too.

SEO Tip #3. How do consumers search for your product or service?
What words do your potential customers use to find your site? Are those the words that you are using on your site, or, are you creating a site that is full of industry terms that John or Jill Q. Public may or may not know? Consumers have a tendency to use broad keywords to find sites that have the information for which they are looking. This will help them learn what companies can help them. The more detailed the search, the closer the consumer is to making a purchase. Are those the keywords you are using on your site? If not, you may want to take a closer look at the words and descriptions you are using.

SEO Tip #4. How many customers does your competition’s site pull in?
There are many tools on the web, both free and subscription-based, that can help you gain insights into these questions. Though they can provide a rough guess, ultimately, you’ll never really know unless you have access to their analytics. However, you can analyze the competition by taking time to view the number of pages they have on their site, the number of inbound links they have, as well as their page rank. These factors can help you determine how they are influencing the online market and how strong their presence really is. Also, it can give you great insight into how you can shape your online strategy.

SEO Tip #5. What are the keywords that drive business?
First, how do you know what your main keywords are and, out of the big list you have compiled, how do you know which ones to use first? In this seo tip, we recommend using a couple of different tools to begin keyword discovery. The first is Google’s free keyword tool. It is a great place to see what words and phrases consumers are using to search, and 2) what the estimated competition is for those words. Once you’ve narrowed down the words and phrases that you believe are most relevant to your business, you can compare them in another valuable subscription-based tool called WordTracker. This tool can help you find longer-tail keyword phrases, as well as measure competition vs. traffic. Good keywords to begin writing pages for will include those who have high traffic and not much competition. That doesn’t mean you should go after words and phrases that have a higher competition and traffic volume if they are relevant to your business. It just simply means it may take a longer period of time to gain higher page rankings for those terms.

SEO Tip #6. What links drive traffic to your site?
Some companies will try to sell link building to you. Though this may seem like a logical, time-saving opportunity to you, make sure to check and to see what sites this company utilized for link building. Do those sites have a high page rank? Can they be influential to the success of your site? Are they related to your site? If not, it may be best to do some quality link building of your own. Tips for creating links include directory submissions, creating link bait (a compelling statement, words or phrases on your site that attract attention), writing a blog, commenting on other blogs, social media posts, article submissions and optimized press releases.

SEO Tip #7. What links drive traffic to your competitor’s site?
If you are curious on how your competitors are gaining a higher page rank, take time to check and see where their inbound links are coming from. There are a couple of tools that will show you this, including Google’s TouchGraph and Yahoo’s Site Explorer. Once you find out what those popular links are, start reviewing them and decide whether or not you’d like to link to them as well.

SEO Tip #8. How much content does your site have versus your competitors?
Content matters. It should be relevant and unique, avoiding duplicate content, whether that be an entire page, or product descriptions. The search engine spiders love new content and so do consumers. Take time to develop pages based around your keyword phrases and eventually, you’ll notice increased traffic to your site, as well as a trusted and knowledgeable industry expert on your products and services.

SEO Tip #9. When was the last time you updated your content?
As mentioned in SEO tip #8, spiders love new content and will often visit a site more often when new content is constantly added to the site. Keeping your content new and fresh also shows consumers that your company is staying on top of trends and has their interests at heart. After all, you are writing for consumers and not the search engines.

SEO Tip #10. Can you tell where your traffic came from and how much you have?
Free tools, like Google Analytics, can help you measure your site’s traffic, including frequency of visits, where traffic is coming from, and what pages are the most popular on your site. Additionally, this tool can be used to measure goal conversion and performance of branded and non-branded keyword phrases. If you don’t have a tool like this on your site, we definitely recommend adding it as soon as you can.

We hope that these SEO tips for 2010 can help you make your website function better and more efficiently for your business. And, if you need more assistance with keywords research, content writing and more, make sure to take an SEO class at Buzzhound Learning Lab. You can learn to optimize your site and make it work optimally for your company.

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Contact us at:

Buzzhound Learning Lab
7305 Marietta (in Maplewood)
Serving 20 cities nationwide
Hands-on SEO classes with 5:1 student-to-teacher ratio
314-951-9600

Contact: Shelly Wolfe
www.BuzzhoundLearningLab.com