Pro-SEO

Searching has become the second most popular activity online, Email being top.
Because of this optimizing your website for search engines should be number one of every webmasters list of things to do.

To start with you should have a clear set of keywords and keyphrases that you want to optimize your website for.

Search Modifiers

The most common mistake by webmasters is to optimize their site for very short keyphrases, which has two negative effects.
The first negative effect is that it will be harder to rank well for in SERPS and secondly they will not send you visitor's who are likely to make a purchase. Think about it like this. Who is more likely to buy a ipod from you? The person who searches for "ipod" or the person who searches for "black 4 gig ipod nano"? Exactly, The second user, They obviously know what they want, So if your site sells it they are likely to buy it.

The longer your keyphrase is the easier it is to rank well. By adding extra descriptive words (modifiers) to your keyphrases you will have more chance of ranking well and more chance of attracting targeted visitors looking to make a purchase.

Geography and SEO

You should also optimize your website with geography in mind. If you run a catering company that operates in London it wouldn't be worth spending the extra time and money it would take to rank well for "catering" when ranking well for "catering in London" would be both easier and cheaper, Also people looking for catering in London are likely to search "catering in London" and not just "catering".

Brands

optimize your site for brands. Ranking well for "digital cameras" would be very hard, Ranking well for "Kodak 10mp digital camera" would be easier, But ranking well for "buy 10mp digital camera 5x zoom in UK" would be even easier still.

Miispellingss

Google has estimated that 10% of all searches made through them are misspellings. Now, I wouldn't suggest optimizing a whole page for misspellings but it wouldn't hurt to include a couple of spelling variations on your page and in meta tags. Ranking well for a misspelling should be fairly easy, Think about it, Who is going to be optimizing a page for "ipos namo" or "degetal camra", nobody would be, But some people will be searching for it.

By now you should have a good idea of how we can include search modifiers and georaphic targeting to attract more visitors by optimizing our pages for longer phrases and attract the types of visitors who are likely to make a purchase.

I hope this works for you and good luck!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 13, 2006 at 7/13/2006. You can skip to the end and leave a response.