Well you’ve built your new website, uploaded it to your server, and submitted it to the search engines. You wait patiently, searching for your site everyday hoping to see it pop up on the results page.

Before you panic and become frustrated, it’s important to realize that in all likelihood, this is exactly what will happen. Even professionally optimized sites do not just appear in the first page of the results.

You need to realize that there are 2 equally important factors: "on page" and "off page"  

On Page factors are anything you can affect within the construction of a single page. This includes everything that is placed in the headers, body, and on-page links (both internal and external).

Take a careful look at your Meta tags including the title, description, Headers H1, H2...H6, <b>, <i> . Some may disagree but I like to start the title tag of the page with my most important key phase. The most common mistake I see people make is naming all their pages after their company. While this may get you great results for people searching for your company name, it’s unlikely that you will see any results for key phrases or words people searching for what you have to offer will actually use. Create as many relevant pages as you need to target no more than 3 key phrases per page and title them accordingly.

Now that your pages are built and tagged correctly it’s time to take a look at your copy. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that most of the search engines will spider the first 275 words on your page. This varies by engine and site structure but is a good guideline for starting out. When writing your sites copy, it is important to make sure that the key phrases in your Meta Tags are utilized in right density and order. To begin with, conduct a search for each key phrase you are optimizing for and use one of the keyword density checkers to examine your sites getting good placement against your own.  These results can be used to fine tune your page copy effectively. Most importantly, stay away from keyword stuffing, hidden text, link farms and anything else that says guaranteed results. This will surely cause you more problems than they are worth by potentially getting your URL banned. Take care to write copy that is friendly to your visitors and the search engines. Don’t overdo it. After you’ve rewritten you copy it’s time to reanalyze your pages with the keyword density checker and make any adjustment necessary.

Once you’re satisfied that you’ve got good Meta Tags and copy, it’s time to start establishing your site as an authority on your subject matter. This is accomplished by obtaining links from other sites to yours. While it is widely believed that every link coming into your site will help establish you as an authority site resulting in higher rankings, it is my firm belief that obtaining links from sites with content that is relevant to your own will pay the biggest dividends over the long haul. If your exchanging links with other sites, take care to examine the page where your link will be added to determine that it is actually indexed by the search engines. Frames and Java script are commonly used deceptively for links pages by unscrupulous webmasters to enhance their own rankings at the expense of others.  

Optimizing your website should always be looked at as target marketing. One common misperception is, the more traffic you receive, the more money you make. This could not be farther from the truth. Think of it this way, if you worked in a retail store and ran an incredible ad that attracted thousands of people who realized that you didn’t have the advertised product ….how much did you make?

In closing, it takes an enormous amount of time and effort to optimize. Don’t be too proud to ask for help if you need it. Website optimization, advertising & marketing

Richard Shaw - http://www.vtws.com info@vtws.com