Apart from your website content, another very important factor search engines use when ranking websites is the number and quality of links pointing to your website. This means, how many websites have a hyperlink to your website.

You can check which websites link to any website by going to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and putting a website’s URL to the box provided.

There are many to increase the number of links pointing to your website and here are the most common and most effective ways:

• Exchanging links with other your related websites
• Submitting your link to free or paid web directories
• Submitting original articles with your tips to free article directories
• Commenting on other your blogs
• Creating social media profiles etc.

When building any type of link to your website, it is important to follow these rules:

• The website’s content should be somehow relevant to your
• Give priority to local websites if you are targeting a specific area
• Make sure that the hyperlinked phrase is actually one of your main keywords, as opposed to your name or your company name
• If you are asked to send somebody a HTML of the link you would like them to put on their website, make sure it is in this structure:

<a href=”http://www.YourWebsite.com” title=”Keyword1,Keyword2, Keyword3”>Keyword1</a>

Make sure that you use your top keywords in your website copy. The text of your pages should contain your keywords in the exact phrasing as you have them in your meta tags and title. To make this even stronger, you can make them bold.

This is a crucial step to get conversions, since when people search for “your [YourTown]”, they want to see a page on your in [YourTown]. A conversion is when a customer contacts you regarding your offering or signs up for a newsletter or takes any action you would like them to take.

When your web page does not include the keyword your customer typed in when looking for your products, it is not very likely that they will keep browsing your website. Moreover, it is recommended that you create a separate page for each of your keyword, or combination of keywords.

The more text, the better for search engine spiders when they index a website; it is strongly recommended that your homepage has at least 200-300 words of “visible” text. Moreover, search engine spiders crawl especially the first 20 words of your website so try to keep an eye on them and make them really relevant to what your website is about.

Before we start talking about search engine optimisation and link exchange in more detail, let’s define a few terms:

1.     URL – this is the address of the page you are linking to, i.e. http://www.YourWebsite.com. Make sure that when you are building external links, you include the whole URL address, also with “http://”

2.     Anchor text – this is the clickable text you can see on the website that is linking to your page. This should contain your most important keywords. For example, your website could be using “your [YourTown]”.

3.     Hyperlink title – this is a little bit into coding – but don’t be scared, it’s pretty easy. Every hyperlink looks something like this in the HTML code:<a href=”http://www.YourWebsite.com” title=”Keyword1,Keyword2, Keyword3”>Keyword1</a>

Can you see the title=”Keyword 1, Keyword 2” there? Yes, it should contain your keywords, although you can use a sentence as well – and when you hover over such an optimised hyperlink, you can see these keywords.

This is the most obvious part of link building – and there are three most common ways how you can go about it.

1. Talk to Website Owners You Know

If you have any friends/partners/customers who have their own websites related to your, ask them to place your link on their website.

As determined by the number, quality and type of linked pages, most search engines don’t even consider websites if there is not at least one or two links pointing to these sites from other websites. Finding websites with similar content (but not your competitors) and high link popularity is one way of increasing your site popularity.

2. Find out Who Links to Your Competing Websites

Another option would be to get a list of your competing websites and find out

which websites are linking to them.  You can do this by going to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and typing a website’s URL into the box provided.

Then you need to review the linking websites and check for these criteria:

• Are they not spamming (too many external links on a page – over 50)?
• Would it be beneficial for you to exchange links with them?
• Would it be beneficial for their visitors to have link to our website there?
• Are they related to your?

3. Respond to Other People Asking for Link Exchange

If you are contacted by other similar websites owners to put their link to your website, you should always first check them out, have a look at their website, and make sure they are not spamming.

When you have your 7 keywords for every of your main pages, the next step is to place them on your website, in the correct way.

There are a few places where you definitely should have them – some are pretty obvious, some are slightly hidden – so let’s make sure you get them all right!

Title

<Title> is one of the most powerful SEO techniques you have, so make sure you use it creatively! When search engine results are displayed, e.g. on Google’s search results page, the title is the first thing people see as a link to your website.

You can also see the title of the website you are just viewing on the top of your browser window.

Thus each page should have a different <title> with 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning. The title should explain in a few short words (your keywords) the intent of the page. Don’t put your company name first – place your keywords first and if you feel you absolutely must have the company name in the title, add it second.

Despite its importance, rather do not overdo it with the length of the <title> tag; 50-150 characters including spaces should be appropriate, even though some SEO gurus recommend 70 max. You also should make the title enticing, so that the viewers of search engines listings will click to see your website.

Description Meta Tag

Below the <title>, there is usually the description meta tag which is considered by Google as the first sentence on a page.

The Description Meta tag is also fairly important. Your description should have 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning and so should your first sentence on the website. Just like the <title>, reflect the content and try to keep there no more than 200 characters including spaces. Change the words around enough so that you can hit various typings of your keywords.

Compared to title, description meta tag should be rather a sentence or two, not just a list of keywords. Make sure you use speech marks correctly as appropriate.

You should have a different title, description and a first sentence on each page. You may also want to try shorter titles with only one keyword or keyword phrase as this will raise you keyword relevance.

Keyword Meta Tag

Although many people rely on them so much when performing SEO, meta tags have decreased in importance recently, but are still worth using for clarity and search results. Their initial purpose was to help search engines find out important information about your page which they might have had difficulty determining otherwise.

The Keyword tag is now the least important but is still used by some engines. As you never know when the rules of the search engines will change, or a new engine will want them, so take the time to include these tags in all your web pages. We recommend you do not overdo it with keywords as well; your keyword meta tag should not exceed 250 characters including spaces.

When performing SEO, you should take the exact same keyword phrase from your keyword meta tag, and use it in the copy of your page, title tag, meta description, text content of the page etc. Any keyword phrases which are only used in your keyword meta tag, will not have enough prominence to help your listings for that phrase.

Now upload these meta tags to the web pages. You might need a hand from your web designer – it should be a very quick issue for them.

When you know the purpose of your website, you should give your visitors a REASON to move towards the goal. Remember, it is not your goal that they will follow; in fact, people are always looking for what is in it for THEM.

Below follows a list of the vital elements of successful website content.

1. Benefits

To give customers what they are looking for, always list benefits (see Chapter 2) of your products rather than features.

Nobody cares so much about what procedures you used when creating your internal services manuals, or for how many years you’ve been around. Usually, what matters to them is what problems you can solve, and more importantly, how they will benefit from using your product.

In addition, websites offering services that managed to fix a problem usually get highest conversion rates.

It is also essential to make sure that your you:we ratio is high enough, which means that you use the word YOU more than WE, speaking about your customers, not yourself.

Remember again: customers don’t care about you at all. The only thing they are looking for is what is in it for them.

2. Call to Action

Once you have decided what you want your visitors to do and after revealing all the benefits they can get, it is crucial to tell them what to do next. It must be crystal clear what they need to do:

- Click here to contact us now!

- Sign up for the Free Newsletter with your Tips Here.

- Press Enter to continue. Etc.

In order to make a call to action more catchy and attention gaining, there is one smart trick: use the red colour every time you want to highlight something so that people will click on it. However, do not overdo it, since when your website is red on its whole, the particular spots will not stand out.

3. Testimonials

Add testimonials to your Testimonials page, and spread them over all the pages in an appropriate structure.

Be as specific as possible and make sure you use relevant testimonials on pages where you speak about individual services.

Always get the customer to allow you to use their testimonial in your marketing materials. For more on testimonials, read Chapter 12.

4. Privacy Policy

As soon as you collect any data from your visitors, you should create a privacy policy (you can use this free privacy policy generator or any other you find on the Internet). Add your privacy policy to the bottom of your pages.

5. The Best Website Structure & Navigation

There is nothing worse than arriving at a website and having difficulty to understand where to go for the information you are seeking. Have an easy to use, clearly marked navigation so that your visitors click-through instead of click-away in frustration:

- All your web pages should be no more than 3 clicks away from the home page.

- On every page you should link back to your home page and your main service(s).

- Make your logo at the top of every page clickable and going to home page.

- Structure your menu on the top in a way that will be clearer and more effective.

- Make it easy to contact you from any page.

You can use this structure or come up with your own – whatever you feel will work best for your customers and prospects.

6. Motivate customers to Come Back Again with Fresh Content

To attract your first time visitors to come back and to keep coming back, you must always have what to offer: nobody will keep returning to see the same pages all the time.

We all know that the more involved customers become with you, the relationship matures and builds: this could be done using an online discussion forum, blog, or just a simple option to post a comment. More on this towards the end of this part.

7. Attractive Design

They say, a picture is worth a thousand words. However, it is actually words that sell. This means that you should use a good mix of both – pictures with highly relevant and interesting content.

8. No Distractions: Keeps Your Visitors Focused

In order to keep your visitors focused on the steps you want them to take, keep all unnecessary distractions away.

If you are paying to bring your visitors to a particular page, so called “landing page” (because they “land” on that particular page from their search in Google), make sure this page is not stuffed with links that will direct them away from the page.

The only links your landing page should contain are those in line with your goal: links to your enquiry pages, newsletter sign up forms, etc.

Another important part of a web page from SEO point of view are the links. As mentioned already, your links should not direct visitors to your home page or elsewhere other than the next step towards reaching your goal.

What is also relevant, is the anchor text, i. e. the clickable text of the hyperlink – for SEO purposes, make sure it contains your keywords as well, don’t leave it just as “Click here to sign up”, but mention your product as well: “Enquire about products now”.

Similarly, your pictures also have so called alternative text (set as “alt” tag), which is the text that people will see when their browser for certain reason cannot display the picture.

You can also see alt tags when you hover over the picture with your mouse.

To make sure your alt tags contain your best keywords, you will probably need to talk to your web developer.

One of the crucial steps of search engine optimisation would be to include your keywords in the headings of your page – in HTML code these are marked as <h1>Heading 1</h1>, <h2>Heading 2</h2> etc. You should have only one Heading 1 and more Headings 2 and 3 on any page.

Headings are a very important attention-grabbing essence of your pages. People will not read your entire content. That’s why it is smart to divide your pages into short paragraphs and to highlight each of them with a killer headline which will not only catch their attention, but also tell them in a second what the whole paragraph is about.

For the SEO purposes, make sure that your headlines are marked <h1>Headline#1<h1>, <h2>Headline#2</h2> etc. and that they contain your best keywords. Apart from the keywords, use words like “zero-cost, proven, benefit, first, discover, complete, exclusive, how to…” in order to gain people’s attention.