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It has been stated many times on the web that getting to
grips with SEO is more achievable when you start to rank your site for local
searches. I agree with this wholeheartedly. Trying to roll up your sleeves and
compete for highly competitive keywords when you have little or no experience
is soul destroying and nine times out of ten a persons SEO experience will end
right there.
Thus local SEO is the way forward to gain those prized ranking positions and
priceless experience. I will give a few examples in this post to help you
achieve improved rankings for your site.
First let's look at the Title Tag: For this example I'm going to presume that
your company does Web Design and your company is based in my local city of Glasgow. Now this is not
rocket science but by having the phrase "Web Design Glasgow"
in my title tag is as good a starting point as any. Some companies like to have
their company name or brand in the Title tag along with the URL of the site. I
always opt against this unless it is actually the company name or the brand
that I'm more interested on optimizing for. Now as I have a little knowledge
about keyword research I would also add the word 'company' so that our title
tag now looks like the following: "Web Design
Company Glasgow" - that's it, anymore and you begin too dilute the
strength of your keyword phrase.
Then in the keyword Meta Tag I would reiterate the title tag as is: "Web
Design Company Glasgow"- nothing else as this is the phrase that I want to
target. I know some SEO guys who completely forget about the Meta
keyword tag as they know Google just skips this and goes straight into the
content for the search terms. Personally, I like to use it because it's just
not Google I optimise for but all Search Engines.
The Description Tag is just that - it explains what the page is all about - so
for this example I would put: "Professional and affordable web design
company | YourCompanyName based in Glasgow"
- nothing fancy just the right amount to help entice a user to click-through to
your page. Notice the pipe bar in the middle of the description - this is a
short-cut mode to relay different types of info quickly and effectively in a
short sentence.
Our body content is the next stage we turn our attention too. Right at the beginning
I would have a H1 tag with the words "Affordable Web Design Company in Glasgow" or
something that not only once again holds our keyword phrase but also makes
sense to a human reader. If you just code for Search Engine robots or spiders
then you may get high rankings but all that effort will be in vain because
it'll just look and read awful to the human eye and they'll exit as soon as
they enter.
By also having your address in the site of your company you can again replicate
the location you are trying to optimize for. One or two more mentions of
"Web Design" in the content should be enough to suffice. Remember do
things naturally - there is such a thing as over-optimizing a page and stuffing
keywords every 5 or 6 words apart- this will do you more harm than good and may
even get your site penalized.
Finally do some off-page optimizing by submitting your site to a few on-line
directories. Some are paid, some are free, some require a link back from your
site to theirs (this is called a reciprocal link).
When submitting your site to the directory make the "Title of your
Website" in the submission form similar to your localized keyword phrase -
"Web Design Company Glasgow" - this is known as having rich keyword
anchor text and helps greatly in defining what your site should rank for in the
Search Engines.
All in all this is a pretty basic level SEO task. We focus on one search
keyword phrase and we localize it to gain a better ranking position. Give it a
week or so then check Google, Yahoo or MSN to see if there has been improvement
in your SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Positions).
Understand why these small changes have worked and once you see improvement
move onto another page and run through the same process with another keyword
phrase and so on and so on. At all times never make too many changes as then
you'll never know what is actually working for you or against you - this is the
model that a professional SEO
Company would follow.
About the Author
Paul Steven is a former Web Developer who now works for a
leading UK SEO Company.
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