Stephen Kuehl

The next step after a website launch is building your SEO(Search Engine Optimization) visibility. Before you begin building your strength, test your ranking with SERP. Add the keyword you want your website associated with, enter your domain, and wait for the results. In most cases, your website ranking may not even appear, or be positioned really low in the results. That’s ok. That’s why you are here now.

Even though SERP is not the most effective way to gauge your website visibility, it is at least a starting point. Google is much smarter nowadays and takes into account your location, recent search terms, and many other events so the accuracy may be a little off.

Next, lets use the analyzer from SEOCentro to see what our website is missing. After you have done that, you can use the information I have written below as a guide to fixing up your website.

1. Meta Tags
2. Google Analytics
3. Sitemap.xml
4. Robots.txt
5. Headings and Keywords
6. Backlinking and Social Media

Meta Tags are tags written within the HTML file to help identify your website characteristics. I would make sure you add these tags, if you haven’t already, to your website and be as descriptive as possible.

<title>...</title>

Most search engines will truncate titles to 60 characters.

<meta name="description" content="...">

Most search engines prefer an meta descriptions between 80 and 150 characters.

<meta name="author" content="...">

Tells the search engine who the author is

<link rel="image_src" href="..." />

This image will show up as the default thumbnail if people share your webpage on social media. It will also display in Google Images search.

<link href=”https://plus.google.com/+StephenKuehlChannel” rel=”publisher” />

Setup a Google+ Account and add your link inside this tag to increase visibility.

 

Google Analytics is a must to increase your visibility nowadays. Luckily, adding it to your website is free for now. Sign up for a Google Analytics account and add the Tracking Code (Javascript or PHP) to your site.

The Sitemap.xml file can be auto generated at xml-sitemaps.com. It is important to note that there is a priority in the way the file is built. Make sure that your base domain and any other important pages such as your blog are near the top of the list and given high priority. Place this file in the main directory of your website.

Mcanerin.com, I found, is the easiest tool to use for generating the Robots.txt file. The purpose of this file is to tell the search engine to avoid linking to this site. It can be embarrassing if a random page on your website shows up in Google’s search results before you main site is listed. Once you have created the file, upload it to your main directory and use the Robot Validator to verify.

Google looks at your heading tags (<h1>, <h2>..) for keywords to add to your search profile. Be sure these headings contribute to the overall strength of your keywords. The search engines uses the heading tags for the keywords, but excessive use of heading tags can be flagged as SPAM. For best practice try not to use more than 30 heading tags in the webpage and no heading tags longer than 120 characters.

Adding a link to your website on social media like Facebook or Twitter will add visibility to your website.