Good SEO is essential for your website’s success. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques increase your site’s chance of rising higher in organic search results and of attaining better site ranks in numerous directories. In a world where pay-per-click advertising devours millions in advertising dollars each year, it makes sense to do everything you can to achieve great organic, unpaid results. Good SEO can help you do that.

There are countless books and sites devoted to improving your site’s SEO and SEO considerations. We won’t delve into reams of material. Instead, we’ll focus on five major techniques that we here at New Bedford Internet use to boost our own client sites; techniques which are reliable, proven, and accurate.

Search engine spiders “feed” on good SEO content. Many website owners think content only appears on the written page; i.e., the stuff you read directly on the site. While it’s partly true—it’s definitely not the whole story! Spiders also read Meta tags, coding, and even the page names you’ve given to your website’s internal files!

One hand trick we recommend is using your page names to increase your SEO presence. For example, a page named “13456mk.html” means nothing to a human being OR a search engine. It’s just short of gibberish, and the search engines won’t care about it. On the other hand, consider the page name: “new-bedford-web-design.html.”  The name actually transmits a kernel of important information about what the website does, and what you can expect from it. It may not seem like much at first glance—but if you think of how search engines gobble up this kind of material and use it to help catalog, sort, and show search results to potential clients and customers, you can see the benefit of optimizing your page names.

Consider naming your HTML pages after important products on your site, or using keywords relevant to your business or services. For example, on our New Bedford Internet website, you’ll find page names like “Web-Site-Hosting.html” and “Web-Site-Hosting.html” Renaming key pages are invaluable changes you can easily make.

Did you know your domain name is another secret SEO weapon? Let’s say your business is named “Jones & Co.” because that’s your family’s name. It’s fine as a general business name, but as a domain name, it doesn’t give a clue about what Jones & Co. does. Do they sell cars? Rental properties? Sheet metal?

It’s vital to select a domain name that matches your company’s main keywords, business type, or services.

If you must have a non-keyword domain name as your primary, consider adding additional domain names which are rich in keywords. These domains can forward to your main domain, hooking customers in through their rich, applicable content.

Once you’ve worked on your page names and domain names, consider article marketing. Content is still king. Adding useful, informational material to your website instantly improves its SEO health and page rankings. Hungry web spiders gobble the material and index it—instantly giving your site more usable worth than simply offering services or products. A good article library not only helps your own visitors, but can improve the overall worth and purpose of the site itself (while allowing it to appear higher in search engines!).

Like articles, sites also gain quality page rankings by having people who care enough about them to link back to them. Happy visitors and business partners often link to a favored site through their own websites, blogs, and personal pages. Use your ingenuity and get others to link back to you. Find complimentary services, fellow local businesses, good quality web directories, or even friends and family and have them add a link to your site on their own. The more “real” links you get, the better your site will rank in searches.

Lastly, Meta tags are an SEO staple. They live in the coded header of your web pages, literally offering search engines a platter of keywords and data to propagate. Meta tags are the easiest thing you can add to your site. Be sure they use optimized keywords that advertise your company well.

SEO considerations are worth tackling, whatever your business size. Excellent SEO habits can improve your site’s worth and presence without costing a fortune in advertising!