How to Improve Your Search Engine Rankings - Ten Quick and Easy Tips to Boost Your SEO Visibility

By Sumi Olson

The Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) business is an ever-growing sector which can be a mystery to most online users. Essentially, it refers to how successfully your web-pages appear within the results pages of searches made by people using search engines (and not driven to the pages through advertising). If your web-pages show up towards the higher levels of the search results lists, more people are likely to click on the link and visit.

This article covers some quick and easy ways that you can build your search engine rankings so that you, your business, your videos, blogs, podcasts, articles, and products & services are found more easily by your target market. The following tips will help you to eliminate blocks or obstacles which undermine your rank results. It will help you work out what your potential audience are looking for and what words (known as "keywords") they are using in their search engine questions.

The key factor driving SEO techniques is understanding and anticipating how search engines index and categorise pages. One of the easiest and quickest ways to improve your results rankings is to meet the criteria the search engines use to rank web pages. This covers the type and amount of content provided on your specific websites, the level of optimisation (i.e. editing page content and the background HTML coding) that you've done on each site, and the overall popularity of each website.

On-page optimisation techniques make up roughly a quarter of the criteria used by search engines. The remaining 75% or so relies on link-building. To build your rankings, follow the following practises and keep track of your progress so you can measure the impact of the various methods. It will help you determine what has the greatest impact on your SEO ranking.

1. Use a free tool like Google keyword search (part of the Google AdWords tool kit) to find out what keywords are being used to find information on your topic or subject area. Include these phrases and keywords within the content of your webpages.


2. Use keywords that relate to your business or industry as opposed to your company name. People who are use search terms such as "dog breed", "French restaurant", or "marketing services" are looking for help on something specific, not your company's brand name.


3. If you're creating a new website, sales or landing page, include core keywords in the domain name - this will help search engines find your page more easily.


4. Ensure your product or service titles include relevant keywords. Make clickable links from your destination pages to webpages or sales pages which include the titles within the link.


5. Place links to your destination page in your navigation bar or in the footer section with anchor text that includes core keywords. Anchor text(or label) refers to the visible, underlined text which is clickable within a hyperlink.


6. Make your site a good resource of information for your topic. Add feeds and links from other sites and content publishers on your niche to create traffic from your site to others. Search engines rate a site on how much of a resource they think it is to others and on how relevant your site is to your topic.


7. Another key criteria for high rankings is having other high- quality sites link to your site. Creating relationships with bloggers and other content publishers who are leaders in your field will help you to create a network of links across your niche and drive traffic towards your site.


8. Register your blog/webpage/articles/videos in legitimate directories and promote the URL links to your relevant profile page and content across your sites and in online/offline marketing. Include links to your destination sites (e.g. blog site, YouTube, webpage, etc.) in your online signatures to encourage traffic from your contacts.


9. Create cross-links across your social media platforms so your destination sites are featured and include links to your social media platforms from your main websites. Use social media marketing to drive traffic to your core destination sites.


10. Promotion - drive people to your site by raising your profile and being active within your niche area. If people can hear about you and see what you do to help them, they are more inclined to click to your destination sites.

Ultimately, offer your potential audience every opportunity to connect with you and share your content. Place yourself in the mind-set of your prospective reader or client or customer, and consider,"How would they search to find my page? What search terms or phrases would they use to find me and my services? What associations would they have on my topic or subject? Where can they find look to find me?"

Keep asking these kinds of questions and actively think like your prospective audience. Use your insight to anticipate the terms you use to describe your business, and how you title your pages, headings, products and services. Spread the links to your destination sites as much as possible within your niche and through your marketing campaigns.

Staying up to date with your links and maintaining dynamic relationships with other people within your niche, you can build a profile and reputation which will encourage people to click onto the links that you have led them to. This will show search engines that your site is one which others find of value and interest and will help them to classify your pages as highly relevant to the search results they provide.

Sumi Olson (author of the Amazon five-star rated, "How to Manage Your Social Media Marketing in 30 Minutes A Day"), is an author, speaker, diamond-rated article writer, consultant and trainer on social media, content creation strategies, and business development. With 25 years' experience in book publishing, business development, online selling, sales & marketing, Sumi is committed to reducing overwhelm and turning insights into implementation. Through speaking events,books, programmes & workshops, she helps you further your publishing or writing aspirations, meet sales, marketing & management objectives, or master social media & online branding. As a working mother herself, she's passionate about helping people create a great work-life balance so that they can spend more time on the things that matter in life - hobbies, friends, and family.

Connect with her on Twitter (@sumiolson), LinkedIn http://uk.linkedin.com/in/sumiolson or visit http://www.learningbusinessskills.com to sign up for her free fortnightly newsletter.

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