The Benefits of Search Engine Management
Written by Marylin Dawson
Search engine management is a very important part of Website building. This is because Internet users turn to search engines 85% of the time to find what they are looking for. Most of these users do not make it past the first couple pages of results before making a purchase. Optimizing your Website so that it can be among the top 20 results (preferably the top 10) can benefit you in many ways...
- * You can be right up there with the so called gurus without spending a dime whereas they are spending crazy amounts of money on pay per click campaigns.
- * You will attract an extremely targeted market. People are doing searches on your keywords so when they land on your Website, they are there for one reason, to make a purchase or gather information that you are providing to them.
- * Search engine management increases your sales. This is again because users are searching for what you have to offer them. You are not pushing unwanted advertising on them, they come to you.
Basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Techniques ...
- * Include unique META titles and descriptions for each of your Website pages. Many webmasters make the mistake of either not using unique tags on each page or worse yet, not using them at all.
- * It is important to use H1 and H2 tags for your main and secondary keywords. This enables search engines to find your Website better and determine what it is about. They give a lot of weight on these tags, so be sure to use them.
- * Include long tail keywords in your Website. These are less competitive and highly targeted to the type of buyer you are looking for. Typically, a long tail keyword consists of 3 or more words relevant to your Website. To gain even more traffic, add the competitive keywords on your first page of your site and add the long tail keywords on the remaining pages.
- * Link building is an essential part of search engine management. You can build links through emailing Website owners, writing articles and submitting to directories, blog commenting, forum signatures, social bookmarking and more.
Management systems such as Google Webmaster Central, Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Center can be very effective tools for SEO. For instance, Google Webmaster Central gives specific guidelines on things such as design and site content, technical information such as specifics of robot.txt, quality guidelines and an easy to follow webmasters checklist. Yahoo Site Explorer enables you to research competitors' sites helping you find their back links, track inbound links and page data and ping and update your Website when you make changes. Bing Webmaster Central enables you to view crawling and indexing as well as view statistics on Bing and you can identify other sites that are linking back to yours. You are also provided with a HTTP verifier, Robot.txt validator and a keyword research tool.
Search engine management might be a bit time consuming, however, it allows you to rank high up in the search engines for zero cost and receive loads of highly targeted visitors to your sites. It is therefore an essential part of marketing for your website.