When I started my own website for my home business I was really excited. I managed to create a website and customize it so it looked great. I spent ages thinking about what needed to be on there, and when I published it I was watching the amount of traffic that arrived almost religiously.
No Traffic to Be Seen
After the first few days I began to feel a little bit down. I wasn’t getting any traffic to speak of. I figured it was just because the site was new so I gave myself a couple of months to sit back, relax and try and spread the work of my business locally. After the two months was up the traffic hadn’t really changed and I realised that it wouldn’t change unless I did something. I thought perhaps the site wasn’t attractive enough but after doing some research online I realised I had made a lot of errors, the biggest being not optimising the site for the search engines.
It may sound a little naive but I just assumed the website would appear on the first pages of search. I didn’t realise that there would be so much competition and that to appear on the first page of search takes a lot of hard work. There is a science behind how search engines place websites in the results pages, which was news to me. I had to start making changes immediately.
Trying to Reach Number One
I spent the next few days trying to find out as much as possible about search optimisation. A lot of what I read went over my head but after a while I began to grasp a few bits and pieces. Each time I learnt something I would go back to my site and begin making the changes I needed. The problem was it became quite technical. Meta descriptions and tags were my first hurdle and I needed help from a professional to sort it out.
Blogs and Keywords
I learnt so much stuff in a short space of time. I asked the professional to help me add a blog onto the site as I discovered these were great for SEO. You can use a blog to create more pages to your site and to create links deeper into the site. One work which is important is ‘keywords’. I had help to find the most beneficial keywords for my site and services and started to use these in my content. The problem with keywords is you have to find a fine line between using them carefully and spamming. No one likes to see the same words repeated time and time again.
Trying to Gain Links
Link building was another term I came across which was quite tricky to sort out. I began by adding my site to directories and putting links to my blog posts on social networking and bookmarking sites. What I really wanted to do was have links placed on other quality sites as I read this was beneficial. No one would accept my guest blog posts though and I didn’t want to risk using black hat techniques so I consulted with an expert once more about how to go about link building safely and effectively.
Tips for Helping Your Site in Search
Good design is important but what’s more important is the content you have on your site and spreading the word. Create lots of information on a blog to build URLs and submit them to Google and other search engines. Build links, use social media and be patient. If you start optimising from the start you will achieve the results you want quicker than if you wait like I did.
By Stuart Edge: Use SEO services if you find it difficult to manage your own optimisation. It saves time and gets great results.
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Hi, great tips. Link building is a certainly a beast and not an easy task to achieve, yet one that needs to be done. I see you sought an expert for advice, any tips you can share on how we can pursue (link building safely and effectively)? Thanks again for sharing your tips.