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As a web design and development company, some of the most common challenges we hear about center on website traffic and search engine rankings. Specifically, questions like "How do I increase the amount of organic search traffic to my website?" and "How do I get my website to rank higher in search engines?" This article covers 4 search engine optimization techniques that will help to both generate more organic search engine traffic and increase search engine rankings. 1. Find keywords with the highest impact. When writing website content, it is important to make sure the right and most appropriate words are being used. Similar websites are competing against one another to be ranked the highest by search engines for certain phrases. If a website is listed on the first page of search results, then it's natural to assume that website will have a high volume of organic search traffic. But how do you get your website to rank high on search engines? There's no 100% guaranteed method, but there are things you can do to increase the likelihood that your site will rank highly. One of those things is the use of keywords. As you write website content, think about the keywords that are most relevant to your company and products. Try using the Keyword Planner tool to get keyword ideas and data on search volume (e.g., number of monthly searches) for particular keyword. Keyword Planner is an AdWords tool, but you can use it for free simply by signing up for AdWords. You won't have to enter any credit card information or start running ads to use the tool. 2. Create a company blog. Having a company blog will do more for your overall business than you might think. -- Blogs can help build a consistent brand image. Create blog posts that identify the company's objectives, goals, and strengths, and speak to the services and/or products provided. -- Blogs help to create a more personal relationship between a company and its consumers because blogs can be used to keep customers abreast of company updates and foster engagement (a standard feature of most blogs are the comments). -- Blogs are relatively cheap to create and maintain; it is an affordable online marketing tactic. -- Blogs can position a company as an industry leader and content matter expert. -- Most importantly, when used correctly, blogs can help a website rank more highly in search results. Blogs provide an opportunity to post new and fresh content on a regular basis, and newly added content encourages search engines like Google to re-crawl a website. Search engines also use keyword-matching to try to pair up search queries with results. So using keywords that you want your site to rank for in your blog entries can help increase organic search traffic and rankings. 3. Choose strong title and meta tags. Title tags are very important on a website: they tell search engines what specific pages on the website are about. The most important and pertinent keywords should be incorporated in title tags. How long should a title tag be, you ask? Make sure title tags don't exceed 70 characters. Also, keep in mind that title tags should differ across the website and should be page-specific. A page's title tag will appear within the 'tab' in the browser window. Meta descriptions also help explain to a search engine what a given web page is about. Meta tags are not visible to users (unless they look at the code); they are solely for search engines. Using relevant keywords within a meta description is recommended because doing so can also help increase the probability that a web page will rank for a certain term. Create clear, relevant meta descriptions that make it obvious to search engines what the content on a web page is about. Just make sure meta descriptions don't exceed 155 characters. There should be a theme among the keywords used throughout a web page, in the page title, the title tag, the meta tag, the H1 and H2 tags as well as the content. Meta descriptions also serve as suggestions for search engines for what text to place under a link within search results. 4. Partake in link building. Reach out to reputable vendors, companies, clients, partners and affiliates and ask them to include hyperlinks to your website on their websites. If they do, this will give your website a backlink, which search engines value. The key to successful link building is to make sure that the other websites linking back to your site are related and legitimate. For example, if you have a real estate company, having backlinks on your website from 3rd party mortgage or bank websites makes sense. In contrast, if your real estate website has lots of backlinks from canola oil websites, those links will likely be seen as unnatural (unrelated) and won't help your cause. Link building can help increase organic search engine traffic and rankings. The more links, the more important search engines view a website and its content. Just make sure to keep the link building natural; search engines will notice unnatural links and may even penalize a website for having them. Have questions about any of these strategies? Feel free to contact us directly at www.liQuidprint.com/contact_us! Author: Rosanna Schatzki, Internet Marketing Manager at liQuidprint
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