Improve Search Engine Ranking with these DIY SEO Tips

A year ago, you may not have known what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) stood for, let alone what it meant. But it has taken the Internet by storm as one of the fastest growing online niches. There are plenty of obvious reasons for this, the major one being that search engines generate most online traffic, and that does not appear to be changing any time soon. This means that your search engine ranking has a direct effect on your site’s visibility and bottom line.

This article will list a few ways that you can boost your search engine rankings, build traffic, and work toward long-term growth of your site based on sound SEO techniques. Let’s get right to them.

Optimizing Content

Content optimization is still important, though tricks like stuffing your content with keywords are rapidly falling out of favor with search engines. Bad content won’t draw repeat traffic to your site, even if you have a good search engine ranking.

The title is the most important element on your website. Optimizing the title can be tricky, but it’s worth your while. You want your targeted keywords as close to the beginning of the title as possible, and they should be mentioned several times throughout the page. At the same time, your titles need to sound natural and not contrived so that readers won’t mistake it for a bunch of nonsense and skip it when they see it in their search results. Catchy, well-optimized titles are the holy grail of web pages, improving click through rates and rankings. At this point, content optimization is as much an art as a science, but there are a few SEO tools you can try to get a better handle on what “optimized content” means. One tool is called Website Auditor. They have a free trial version you can download to see if it suits your aims, and a paid version with more features.

Choosing the Best Keywords

The goal is to rank high in Google searches for keywords that get searched a lot. A keyword that is searched a lot, and has little in the way of competition is like gold, as long as it is relevant to your site. When it comes to keywords, traffic is only one factor. Focused keyword research is vital to improving your site’s traffic. You want keywords and key phrases that relate closely to your business’s services or products. There may be keywords in your niche that are hot right this minute, and it’s OK to take advantage of that, but also using keywords that have sticking power – the so-called “long tail” keywords, are better in the long term.

Many keyword research tools are available for free and for a price. These programs help you to develop your keyword list and estimate potential traffic. This will assist you in setting priorities for the keywords you research. Google Adwords External Keyword Tool is a good service, as are Word Stream and Rank Tracker, Keyword Discovery, and Wordtracker.

Building Back-links

This is the key to long term success of your site. The more links there are to your site, the more traffic it will get. However, they need to be from quality websites. That means that the use of paid linking services and free link farms is not a good idea. Search engines that are able to sniff this out penalize sites for it by ranking them lower. To get legitimate links from quality websites, there are several things you can do. You can submit pages to directories, submit relevant articles leading back to your site, and bookmark your site with social bookmarking services like Digg and StumbleUpon. Commenting in relevant blogs helps, although leaving a link in a comment is frowned upon by some blog owners and forums. Searching out your competition can help too. What do they have that you don’t? A clean page design? Easy navigation? It isn’t exactly rocket science. You can figure some of this out pretty easily sometimes.
Link building is a time consuming process, but it is vital to your site’s long term success. You can use SEO software to help the process along, but they won’t do all the work for you. Good link building and link analysis tools include LinkAssistant, Backlinkwatch, and SEO Spyglass.

Improving your site’s search engine rankings is not an overnight process (unless you happen to be writing about a topic that suddenly booms in popularity due to other media coverage). If you regularly use multiple approaches to SEO improvement, your ranking will go up steadily, as will click-throughs and sales.