Affordable SEO – Optimizing Your Website for Google

Photo by manfrysWith Google capturing over 65% of all website searches, it’s important that your small business website rank well in Google. There are many search engine optimization consultants who can help you optimize your website, but if you’re looking for an affordable SEO alternative, you might want to handle these tasks on your own.

Here are 6 beginner steps to optimizing your website for Google:

Step 1: Do your keyword research

The absolute most important step in any search engine optimization campaign is accurate keyword research. If you choose keywords that are impossible to compete for, or keywords that are used by unqualified traffic, the rest of your SEO program will be worthless.

Step 2: Map your keywords to your web pages

Once you’ve chosen the ideal keywords, you’ll need to decide which page should rank for which keyword or keyword phrases. Every page on your website should focus on a different set of keywords and every page should be optimized individually.

Step 3: Craft your title tags

The titles of your web pages are one of the most critical aspects of on-page SEO. Be sure to use a unique title tag for every page and place your keywords as near to the front of the title as possible. Remember, your title tag is not only important to your Google ranking, but it’s also an important factor in attracting human visitors. Since your title will show up in your Google SERP listing, it needs to be compelling enough to make web surfers want to click through to your website.

Step 4: Create your page headlines

Writing web page headlines is definitely an art form. That’s because the headlines on your website must entice your web visitors to read the rest of your web copy while they also must convince Google that your web page deserves a decent ranking. In order to satisfy Google, your headline must be contained within an H1 tag and it should contain your keyword or keyword phrase as close to the beginning as possible.

Step 5: Write your web copy

Years ago, the only SEO issue to consider when writing your web page copy was ensuring that you had an adequate keyword density. Keyword density is no longer much of a factor in search engine optimization because the search engines have gotten much more sophisticated than that. Google is extremely adept at interpreting your body copy and determining the relevance of your page and how useful the page will be to your website visitors. For that reason, you want to write as naturally as possible, and write to provide a benefit to your human visitors, not to mislead Google.

Step 6: Create your web page names

You can get a slight SEO boost by using keyword specific URLs. It’s not necessary to register an entirely new domain name in order to get your keyword in, simply include your keyword or keyword phrase as part of the page name. Instead of creating a page named “services” use “dog-grooming-services” instead.

While basic search engine optimization is critical to the success of your website, it doesn’t have to be expensive. Follow these 6 easy steps, and you’ll be on your way to creating your own affordable SEO plan.

Need Some Help Getting Your Site Ranked in Google?

Be sure to check out our affordable SEO Starter Service – it’s a 30 day program geared specifically for small business owners on a small business budget.

You might also be interested in:

• Affordable SEO with Longtail Keywords
• SEO Techniques – Easy On Page Elements You Can Optimize Today
• Choosing the Right Keywords
• Why Won’t My Site Show Up in Google?
• The Single Most Affordable SEO Tip Around

This entry was posted on Friday, June 4th, 2010 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Affordable SEO, Small Business Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.