One of the most frequently asked questions we receive from business owners involves how to get their web site to show up on the front page of Google. In a lot of cases the person asking this question is an owner or branch manager and not a technical web designer. They are usually working with a contractor or in some cases an internal employee or maybe a family member to help create their web site.
In a lot of cases their web site is very professional and looks great, but just is not ranking well because it is not “formatted” in the proper way for the top search engines, like Google, Bing and Yahoo to read and “index”,or list it for the type of products or services that the business provides in the geographic area that the business or brand focuses on in the local market.
To help answer this question we have created a One Page Website SEO Checklist for Business Owners listing the top areas to pay attention to when creating or redesigning any web site for better ranking in Google, Yahoo or Bing. These items are not platform specific and it does not matter what software or template program is used as long as the web page areas of concern can be modified. We have used these methods with small sites in local markets to very large sites that needed to rank on the front page of national markets.
Click the title of each item or the “read more” button for further explanation and in most cases a short video example.
Website SEO Checklist for Business Owners
Top SEO Internet Marketing Secret Tip #1 for Business Owners
The first top professional SEO technique is to make sure that the primary key word phrase is part of the website domain name. One of the main methods that internet search engines, including Google, use to identify and index web site keywords is the domain name.
Top SEO Internet Marketing Secret Tip #2 for Business Owners
The second top professional SEO technique is to avoid the use of flash on the home page or any page that needs to be ranked high in the search engines. Although consumers obviously enjoy the use of flash for viewing video and animation, the search engines do not read flash well at all.
Top SEO Internet Marketing Secret Tip #3 and #4 for Business Owners
The top professional SEO internet marketing techniques #3 and #4 are keyword phrase placement and keyword density.
Our experience has shown that it is important to include the primary keyword phrase for the site or page attempting to be ranked in the first paragraph of the text copy. The closer to the front of the paragraph or first sentence the keyword phrase is placed, the better the opportunity for higher ranking. Keyword phrase density is recommended to be 2% -4% compared to the full body test for the page to be ranked.
Top SEO Internet Marketing Secret Tip #5 for Business Owners
Top Internet Marketing Secret Tip #5 for Businesses is Anchor text. The anchor text, link label or link title is the visible, click-able text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can help determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines. Anchor text links normally remain below 60 characters. Different browsers will display anchor texts differently depending on the browser settings and the style setting on the web page.
Top SEO Internet Marketing Secret Tip #6 for Business Owners
Top Internet Marketing Secret Tip #6 for Businesses is Title Tag Keywords. The Title Tag of a web page is the text listed in the heading section of the web page. The Title Tag keyword phrases are without question one of the most important areas to consider in getting a web page ranked in on the internet.
Top SEO Internet Marketing Secret Tip #7 for Business Owners
Top Internet Marketing Secret Tip #7 for Businesses is Alt Text Tags. The Alt Tag attribute was originally used in HTML documents to specify alternative text (alt text) that is to be displayed when the image was not available. Most browsers would also display the text in the image place on the page while the browser was downloading the image, which was more visible with slower dial up internet connections. Search engines now use this text to identify the intended content of the image in their algorithms when they calculate the relevance of the content on the web page.
Top SEO Internet Marketing Secret Tip #8 for Businesses Owners
Top Internet Marketing Secret Tip #8 for Businesses is Bounce Rates. The Bounce rate is the time that a consumer stays on a particular web site and is used by search engines to help determine the relevance of a site once the consumer arrives. It is recommended that web sites attempt to keep consumers on the site for at least two minutes.