In this video, Alex Centeno MBA., creative director at Merkados™, explains three ways to gain better search engine positioning. Most of the time, when you hire a professional advisor, they will give you a comprehensive list that can help you increase your indexing and rankings. Of course, this can be overwhelming. So here are three simple easy ways to start in the right path.
1. Crawl your Website –
Find Broken Links and Fix Those. The primary way in which Google discovers pages is through navigation. And if you have broken links, they affect the ability for Google to get to your pages, but also it affects your users. It reflects negatively on your brand to have something that doesn’t work. And it is so easy to fix. First, download a crawler, if you are on a PC: Xenu Link Sleuth. If you are on a Mac, I recommend Integrity or Scrutiny. This will help you understand the structure of your site and improve it if necessary. Make it easier for web crawlers (including Googlebot) to find and index your pages. Check for Headlines, for Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions and page length. Make sure that they make sense for humans as well as for robots.
2. Go to Google.com and type “site:yourwebsite.com”.
That will give you an idea of how many pages Google is finding about your site. In my experience, Google shows a different set of URLs when you do a site: search and when you do a regular search. So another interesting way of seeing URLs that are actually competing for ranking is to simply add site:. to the site:yourwebsite.com . This will give you a more realistic competing list of URLs. If you want to have a much more comprehensive view of Google’s view of your site, sign up for a Google Webmaster tools account. It is free and it gives all the information you need about what is indexed in Google. Also, for bonus points, sign up for Microsoft Webmaster Tools. That way you’ll have an even better perspective on how robots from search engines “see” your site.
3. Ask your network for links.
Links are a very important aspect of today’s SEO. Search Engines rely heavily on what the public says about you, much more than what you have to say about yourself. Pretty much the same way that happens in the real world.
Contact some of your providers or bloggers in your industry and ask them for links. If this effort proves to be useless. Then ask yourself, what kind of content would be appealing to them. What would make them love your website? How about a page with a directory of the best resources in your industry? How about a script that calculates something important for your audience? Then offer them a spot in the directory or offer them the script in HTML format to offer to their users – this in exchange of one link.
Offer the public something of value, ideally content, and encourage them to share the content with their own audience – in essence creating a “link” between them and you.
Are you interested in learning more about how to increase your interactive marketing presence? Contact Merkados Today.
