Your website is your strongest communication tool to reach out to your customers. If you’ve done your homework, it should be dynamic, interactive, multifunctional, user friendly, and most importantly, it should be Search Engine Optimized. At AVID Design, we strongly encourage each of our clients to come up with an SEO management and maintenance plan, and we practice what we preach. As we look forward to a new year of experiences and relationships, we’ve looked back on what we feel are our most important SEO lessons and best practices.

1)      Content remains the most important tool your website has. No amount of optimization can make up for poorly written content that isn’t relevant, concise, and keyword rich. If no one in your organization is an expert on web writing, considering hiring a writing service that is.

2)      Long keyword phrases are king. Every year, keywords get used by more and more sites. General keywords like “Cancer” or “Heart Health” will never be effective on getting you to page one of a Google search. Try to focus on specifics that will help direct users to your unique services, such as “Non-Invasive Cancer Treatment in Atlanta.” There will be less competition for these phrases and you will help your future customers find exactly what they need.

I always think of tiny robots hunting through my pages when I'm focused on SEO.

3)      Know your location and make sure any outside sources that refer to you know it too. Local SEO is becoming more prominent every year, so it’s important that the search engines can see where you are. If you change your address, make sure to do it everywhere that you show up on the web.

4)      Always update your site. Just because you launched your site doesn’t mean you’re done. One of the most important things that you can do for your site is to consistently update it. Do you have a new employee? How about some research that recently got some attention? What events are coming up? Tell people what you’re up to and what makes you unique.

5)      After you’ve put your metadata in place (and DO use metadata; it’s not everything, but it will make a difference), monitor your site using a program like Google Analytics. Experiment with your metadata to see what works of you and what doesn’t.

6)      If you have social media of any kind associated with your site, update it regularly or don’t bother with it at all. Additionally, bother with social media. It may seem like a small step, but this will garner you a surprising amount of traffic if you use it regularly to let people know what’s going on with you. Use bitly or tinyurl to link your social media posts to your site.

There are many steps that you can take to make sure that your website doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. With time, effort, and sometimes a little financial investment, you can bring your website optimization to the next level. And trust me, it’s very satisfying to look at your Google Analytics Reports and see how your traffic jumps up.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 4:41 pm and is filed under AVID Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.