Search engine optimization or SEO is defined as “The techniques employed to improve a website’s ranking on the search results page of popular search engines.” When properly employed, SEO will build your company website’s popularity.

Of course, like many other elements of business, SEO takes work-it is not just a onetime job that once you do it, you can mark it off your list never to do again. In fact, regardless of how one approaches and uses SEO, there are some basic steps to follow.

Steps for Search Engine Optimization

There are two ways to prepare for search engine optimization: strategizing and implementation. The strategizing helps you determine how to best use Internet Marketing practices and what elements are most needful for your site. Here are the beginning steps of SEO.

Create a list of SEO friendly keywords.

• Talk to friends and family and ask them what words/phrases (also known as long tails) they would use if they searched for your website.
• Use tools such as Wordtracker.com, Google Adwords.com, or KeywordSpy.com to help you determine what words or long tails rank the highest for your industry or site.
• As you create the list of keywords, keep in mind what you want to rank for on search results. For example, if your focus is monogrammed travel accessories the words such as “weekend travel” are less valuable to you.


SEO Implementation and Site Prep

Once you have your list of SEO friendly words, you are ready to implement them into your site using White hat Internet Marketing practices. (White Hat SEO is accepted as correct; Black Hat search engine optimization is much like cheating. Yes, you may get quicker results, but they are short lived and viewed poorly by search engines.) There is a variety of ways to implement your SEO friendly keywords into your site. Some of these are:

• Using them in your page’s name, i.e. “About Monogramed Travel Accessories”
• In the title tags and headings
• Underneath pictures
• Video clip descriptions
• Navigational links which include info that relates to your keywords!

Of these search engine optimization steps, one of the easiest and best ones is to include the keywords as part of the title of your homepage. In addition to these basic SEO steps, several other actions should be taken to create a search engine optimized website. These SEO friendly practices are:

• Choose web content carefully. If you are targeting a specific location (i.e. Plano, Texas web design) then include the Plano address on the page(s) whenever possible.
• Use keywords often, without overkill. Keywords should make up 3-5% of the word count for your site.
• Add new web content often as search engines love to “see” new posts-whether it is pictures, videos or text, this new content improves your SEO
• Make sure that your website loads quickly, as slow loading websites are penalized for search engine optimization purposes.
• Don’t quit! SEO is something that successful websites are always improving. Make it a priority to spend time every month working on increasing your site’s search engine optimization.
Search engine optimization is one of the most vital skills the website developer has, but it is not some mystical language. Take the time to implement SEO and boost your company’s presence on the Web.

Related resources on Internet Marketing:

–Beginners guide to SEO
–Search Engine Optimization for small business
–Internet Marketing for your website[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]