SEO Basics: Improve Your Website Visibility Strategy

Content may be king, but even a king needs a good throne from which to rule. Today’s SEO basics focus is on how to improve your website visibility strategy. You do have a strategy, right?

The main focus of most visibility strategies for websites is often content and only content. It makes sense when you consider that the framework of a website or blog is often put into place and tweaked only once.

Content on the other hand, is something that you deal with frequently, and because of this it receives more attention. When thinking about SEO for your existing website, always remember that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

The search engine bots and spiders do not limit themselves to only crawling the content portion of your website. The header, menu(s) sidebar(s), and footer are also being crawled at the same time. Within the content itself, there are additional opportunities to improve website visibility using anchor text, picture text and outgoing links. Here are a few things for you to look at.

1. Anchor Text – How many of us are guilty of just using the words “Click Here” instead of a keyword or keyword phrase that pertains to the information on the page your hyperlink links to? I am guilty of this far more frequently than I care to admit. I know I should take myself out behind the woodshed and give myself a good talking to.

If you are referring to information elsewhere, whether on or off your site, try to use a related keyword for the text shown in place of the hyperlink. This will give you credit for the actual keyword used, but also increases the value of the link, if the page it leads to is also optimized for that keyword or phrase.

This is easier to put into place upfront for external links. When it comes to creating internal links, you may have to revisit your site periodically to inter-link new content with old.

2. Links to other websites or pages – Use keyword rich anchor text to link your website to internal and external pages by creating an index of services and featured information. A great place for creating an index is in a side bar on your website or even as a drop down from your menu. This is also a good time to check for and remove any broken links on your site.

For WordPress users, the Page Links To plugin is a great plugin for drawing external static pages into your blog. The pageMash plugin is another great plugin that allows you to order your pages as you would like them to appear. Finally, the Multi-Level Navigation plugin by Ryan Hellyer creates a great drop down menu system.

3. Picture Text - A picture is worth a thousand words to your website visitors, however, those words will not be heard by the search engine bots and spiders if it remains untagged.

One thing I have noticed in WordPress is that the name of a picture file uploaded is automatically entered into the title and alt tags. This can be changed through the properties of the picture in the WYSIWYG editor, or what I find easiest to do is simply switch to the html version and manually enter the tags I want used after the picture has been inserted into a post.

These tags can also be added to a picture on a static html or php page and should be formatted so that they not only contain your keyword or phrase, but are also reader friendly. Those who mouse over the pictures will then see writing that makes sense and those using software that reads the page out loud won’t be hearing a bunch of file names that make no sense such as pic234856.jpg.

Using picture text is not only an important part of your website visibility strategy, it also improves the experience visitors have on your website or blog.

4. Update Your Meta Description – When we first create a website or Blog, we often have only a general idea of how best to describe it to the outside world.

As your site matures, it takes on a personality of its own and it may have outgrown the original description it was given. Use the meta description to improve the visibility of your website by including a keyword rich description of what readers will find when they visit.

5. Gather the Luv – Yes, I know the common phrase is spread the luv, but there is nothing stopping you from gathering in some luv for your blog while you are at it. Make seeking out Luv-able sites part of your backlinks strategy by looking for sites that feature the DoFollow and CommentLuv for their comment sections.

DoFollow will remove the no follow tag default for comments on WordPress sites. CommentLuv allows you to link to specific posts on your own CommentLuv enabled site, which in turn helps with deep linking.

Avoid comment spam and make sure the comments you leave relate to what is being talked about in the post you are commenting on. Comment spam such as, “great post” or “buy my product here” are more likely to get not only your comment removed, but may put you permanently out of the circle of luv if your IP is banned.

Updating the SEO for existing websites and blogs may not be a daily task, but it is something that you can schedule at regular intervals as part of your website visibility strategy.

When you do, take a good look at the entire website to see if there are any additions you can make or areas that can be updated to make it a place spiders and bots will be excited to visit.

To Your Success,

SherryD
http://www.wbobr.com