Image courtesy: wvgasguy

In this post, I will explain you how to optimize your whole website for search engines for a better ranking and traffic. And I will also explain you on registering with web directories which is a very good source of traffic. Always keep in mind that I’m explaining you the most proven methods in website optimization. As we all are aware that the internet technology is changing and improving, the techniques might change and improve. But these basics won’t change. It’s your responsibility to learn those new optimization techniques and apply them to your web page.

As I explained you in an earlier post, the design of the website plays a major role in attracting visitors. Therefore you must design your website properly and cleanly. Use CSS as much as possible as CSS makes your website more stable in the aspect of design. The best practice is using a single separate CSS file in your website copy. Another thing that you must do is link to other pages and main pages within the content of any page as much as possible. This will keep your visitors in your website for a longer time. Always try to link trusted and reputed content pages of other websites which are relevant to your niche. Visitors will love this and they will understand that your website is not only business oriented, but informative too. By doing this you can build the trust of your customers.

Always try to use a description when you link to another page or any other component. For an example, let’s assume that you are linking to a page related to “Free offers”. It is more efficient to use a phrase like “Here are some free offers” (ie. <a href=”http://www.yoursite.com/free-offers.html”>Here are some free offers</a>) rather than the URL as it is (i.e. <a href=”http://www.yoursite.com/free-offers.html”> www.yoursite.com/free-offers.html </a>) or a word like “Here” (ie. <a href=”http://www.yoursite.com/free-offers.html>Here</a>).

A sitemap is a very efficient way to make your website friendlier to search engines. Then the search engines can spider through your whole website very easily. You have to consider about the navigation of the website also. The best method is using text based navigation. If you use image based navigation to make your website more attractive, always remember to use an alternative text (i.e. <a href=http://www.yoursite.com/abtUs.html><img src=http://www.yoursite.com/aboutus.jpg alt=”Home page”></a>). You can use a background image and text navigation.

Another important thing is a breadcrumb. If you use a descriptive breadcrumb with the relevant keyword or keyword phrase, the search engine would love to crawl through your website as it helps to understand the structure of your website. And it also helps the visitors and customers of your website. You can do it in an informative way as I mentioned below.

Home page -> Main page -> Page 1 -> “you are here”

Actually it’s your imagination to be more creative, but make sure that you follow the basic guidelines. These are the main things you must do to optimize your webpage. I will update you on the future development techniques of this part.

Let’s move on to the submitting of your website to search engines. I assume that you have followed all the steps I mentioned up to now and your website is hosted after many cycles of full vulnerability and quality checks. Always keep an updated copy of your hosted website with you. If you want to make changes after hosting, first do it with your local copy and test it properly before uploading it into the server to go live. Now you have an optimized and completed website hosted and ready to do business. What you need now is the traffic as much as possible. Without traffic, you are completely lost. The first traffic generators for your website are web directories.

Web directories can be divided into 2 major parts as free and paid. Free directories are less effective compared to paid directories. But the free directories are not 100% useless. If you do a Google search for free web directories, you will find many. There is no point of mentioning some of them here as those will change with time. Some directories offer both free and paid services. But they give a higher priority for paid listings. My advice is to use these directories as much as possible according to your budget for marketing of your website. Make sure that you add your website in categories which are relevant to your niche for a higher traffic. Higher the number of links to your website from other websites, higher the search engine ranking and traffic. It is simple like that. Therefore try to make links to your website from other websites as much as possible. If you pay for listing in a directory, make sure that you pay for the high ranked websites. You can have a higher rank if you have links from high ranked websites.

I think that I have covered all the important parts in website optimization and registering with web directories. In the next post I will explain you how build the links to your website from other websites, which is a very important segment in SEO.