Before you even begin to create your first web site you should expect to spend several hours doing research. You need to go to google.com and type in keywords that you think people would use to find your site, see what comes up. Visit your competitors web sites and see what you like and dislike about them. Why is someone going to choose your product or service over the competition?
Use the Google keyword tool to see which keyword phrases are used most often. These phrases are very important to use in your meta tags. Think what terms you want your page to rank for. It is easier to rank for phrases than single terms. Think about it like this. You want a new pair of Nike running shoes and you type shoes in the search engine. You may find horse shoes, snow shoes or shoe stores that don’t even sell running shoes. If you type running shoes in the search engine you will get much closer to finding a shoe store that sells what you want, but maybe they don’t carrry Nike. You type Nike running shoes into a search engine and you will be very close to finding exactly what you want. Needless to say, it is much easier to rank for specific terms than generic terms. Specific terms also bring you more qualified traffic.
The Meta Title Tag is extremely important to the search engines. Many people just put their company name here, but that is a huge mistake. You want people that don’t know your company name to find your web site. List your product or service first, using common search phrases, then follow it with your company name. Is your location important? If it is make sure you include it as well.
If I am looking for a company to repair my plumbing, you can be sure their location is very important. Houston plumber, houston plumbing company, plumbing houston, houston plumbing contractor are all things I might type in to find a plumber. I am shocked at how many companies that only provide local services, fail to put their location on their web site.
Your title tag is often the text that shows up as a link in the search engines. A good title tag would be something like. Houston Plumbing Company - 24 Hour Service & Repair - ABZ Plumbing The first part is a common search phrase, the second part tells people what you do and last is your company name. You can use up to 70 characters here.
The title tag is so important that there is a SEO plugin for WordPress that allows you to change the title tags on your blog.
The text in your Meta description tag often shows up under your link in the search engines. It is important to use search phrases here and also important to use a different description for each page on your site. You may use up to 255 characters here. Example: “ABZ Plumbing company provides 24 hour emergency service for the Houston, Tx area. Call 281-000-0000 for fast service on overflowing toilets, clogged drains and water leaks. Print coupon from our web site for 10% discount on plumbing repair. “ This example contains important keyword search terms as well as info that is important to a customer. They know before they click that you work in their area. The discount offer may intice them to click your listing rather than someone elses.
The keyword meta tag used to be of great importance but isn’t used much these days. This is an area that spammers used to abuse so many engines no longer pay it attention. It doesn’t hurt to use it though and it may be helpful to put misspellings that people often use in a search here.
The above on-page optimization tips used to be all that was required to rank high in the search engines. The engines did not like that we could control the rankings so easily so they started factoring in lots of off-page factors that are not so easily manipulated.
