Building a local website can best be accomplished with a logical approach. The following steps will help you build a local website optimized for search engine resultsMany aspects of SEO are important, Link Building, Content, and Submissions to name a few. This multi-part article will target building the website for capturing local organic search listings.We will cover:
- How to do Keyword Research. Building with the right keywords in mind is essential to high search rankings.
- Estimating Traffic Volume for the keywords. Why optimize for terms people are not actively typing into the searching engine?
- How to do Competitive Research. Not only must there be traffic for the keywords, they must also have a reasonable level of competition.
- Page and Website Optimization. The edits which are necessary to optimize the visibility of your chosen search terms for the search engines.
The website: Two things should be answered at the outset of this process; 1) Do you have tracking analytics?, 2) Can you edit your website?
1) Google Analytics is a free tool which will help you monitor your website traffic and success. If you already have an analytics account, you have all that is required. Make sure you can login and generate the code to embed in a webpage. Google offers excellent training on how to use Analytics.
If you do not have Analytics then Google for Goole ANalytics and open a free account. Work through the training and get comfortable with the basic concepts. Analytics will let you see the results of your future SEO work.
2) Do you have the ability and administrator access to update your website? If your website is outsourced, make a point to get your developer on board with the SEO changes you will need to make. Most of these changes will be simple and will not require deeper coding work. Don\’t let your webmaster exaggerate what needs to be done. In most cases it will be minutes of work – not days. Tell the webmaster you will need a detailed list in two weeks and schedule a meeting to review what is needed.
My personal favorite is WordPress. It used to be more of a blog, today it is perhaps the best website platform available. Use a hosted version, not the free version. The free version is best for just learning the ropes. The hosted version gives you control of key elements you will use to optimize your website.
Conclusion:
Gather the tools and prepare for the small but important changes we will make in the next two weeks to build your success in local search results.In the next installment we will take about building your keyword lists. It all starts with properly chosen keywords.
Gather the tools and prepare for the small but important changes we will make in the next two weeks to build your success in local search results.In the next installment we will take about building your keyword lists. It all starts with properly chosen keywords.