This is part one in a series of posts we’ll be making aimed at helping our affiliate partners run the best independent websites possible. We hope these little nuggets will help maximize your website because, after all, the better you do, the better we do!

Our first post in the series is on basic Search engine optimization (SEO). There is a lot of material on the web about this but we’ve got some tips on how to make your natural rank rise.

PURPOSE

If you really want to understand why your web site is working or not working as you had initially intended or planned, you need to ask yourself one question. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF YOUR WEB SITE? If you don’t know why you built your site in the first place you are wasting your time. First, decide if your website is to be used for lead generation, consumer information, B2B information, ecommerce, service sales, etc.

CONTENT

Once you have figured out the WHY of your site, you need to fill it with relevant content. One thing most webmasters and website development companies won’t do for you is find the right content, and build said content with both your target market and the search engines in mind. Please note stuffing your website pages with popular keywords will only get you into hot water with the search engines. When adding content, make it relevant to your product and service offerings, company ethos, and the like.

Content is king, and it delivers your company message to your audience and to the search engines. Your site’s content needs to be geared to educate the masses and sell your products or services while drawing the attention of the search engines looking to index the content of your site. When you have content that is matched to high volume search terms, the more likely it will be for you to be indexed and gain higher natural search rankings. In this regard, you have the potential to kill two birds with one stone. Develop excellent content for your audience and excellent content for the search bots or spiders.

KEYWORDS

As you build your content begin looking for keywords which are both popular and relevant to include. When placing the keywords within your copy make sure make these words in bold or italic. This shows the search engines that these words have significant importance.

CONCLUSION

SEO is an ongoing process, which requires a lot of work and the above tidbits are a mere starting point. SEO is not an insurmountable task and it can be done without thousands of dollars from professional firm. However, it takes time, effort, and yes, knowledge of website coding.

Stay tuned for future posts on all things search engine related…