Basics that Bear Repeating

We continue this month's focus on digital marketing by discussing search engine optimization (SEO). SEO techniques can be employed by website owners to improve their natural ranking on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Because site owners do not pay for clicks on naturally appearing search results, having an optimized website is a great and inexpensive way to generate web leads.

The first question you should ask yourself is, "Am I using the right URL?" Way too often I see businesses that have URLs with their names in it. This is a big mistake. I own weissandassociatespc.com but don't use it as my primary email. Anyone searching Weiss & Associates will find me organically so using an eponymous URL does not really help me. Rather, you should consider a URL that contains words or phrases prospective customers will enter in a search when looking for your product or service. Even better, if you can use a URL that contains words or phrases that are part of various searches in your niche. I use "nytrafficticket.com," which would match, in part, such searches as "New York traffic ticket," "NY traffic lawyer," etc.

The next SEO best practice is to regularly update your site, especially the home page. By regularly updating your site, you are telling the search engines that your site is alive. Sites with the same exact content month-to-month are considered dormant and, as a result, devalued by search engines. Keep in mind that search engines will "crawl" your site, at least, twice a month, so strive for at least two updates per month. You don't have to re-work your home page. Rather, you simply need to replace a portion of the content. I have a traffic news section which I regularly update but otherwise leave my home page intact.

By the way, your site should have a content management system so that you can easily make updates to your site without the need to use a web developer. If you don't have such a system, it is definitely time for a change.

One final tip is to make sure your company’s site has a site map. Search engines use this as another criterion for ranking your site and having one makes it easier for the search engines' spiders to crawl your site. A good content management system will update your site map whenever you add pages.

Creating and maintaining a website which ranks naturally high is an on-going process. Devote a little amount of time to this task each week and, over time, you will see the results.