Having a website that gets found in Google, Yahoo, Bing, and the other major search engines is not all that difficult a feat to accomplish.  The tricky part is knowing where to begin. Here are our latest and greatest tips to get you started in chronological order from New Pulse Management, a search engine optimization company in Los Angeles:

1. Do not purchase a new domain unless you have to. These days the search engines put a lot of focus on how long your website and domain have been around. While you can purchase a new domain and redirect your old one to the new one using a 301 redirect, your best bet is to use your existing domain/website if at all possible.  Ask us to run a free website analysis on your ‘search engine optimization’ grade to help you determine the age of your domain.  Further, if you're redesigning or starting from scratch you can expect at least somewhat of a loss in search engine traffic out of the gates. It could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months or more while the engines pick up on your changes.  Ask us about the details and timing of the best search engine optimization package or campaign for you. 

2. Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the search engines. This may sound like one and the same, but the reality is the search engines are computers, and the target audience are living breathing humans. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrases someone types into the search box of any engine. If those people are typing in search words that relate to what your site offers, then they are most likely members of your target audience and their needs.  People fail to realize that in the end, the search engines use amazing algorithms, and they’re designed to effectively know where to send searchers/users.  If you optimize for your users, in the end, the engines will catch up, and you’ll receive more than just traffic and visitors; you’ll receive visitors who actually need your products and services.

3. Research your keyword phrases extensively. The phrases you think your target market might be searching for may very well be incorrect.  The search engines have gotten more and more sophisticated as time goes on.  To find the optimal phrases to optimize for, use research tools such as Google’s Keyword Tool.  Companies who do search engine optimization and web design compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your site, and choose a few different ones for every page. Never shoot for general keywords such as "real estate" or "mortgage" as they are usually far more general than you need.  They’re also rarely obtainable, as the super websites like Wikipedia, Google, and Amazon, usually has a pretty good grasp on the general words.  Ask us about Search Engine Optimization and how we can effectively hone traffic in your industry to your site.   

4. Use a web design approach and categorize your site architecture and navigation based on your keyword research. Your web design team, or Search Engine Optimization Company may uncover undiscovered areas of interest or ways of categorizing your products that you may wish to add to your site. For example, if your site sells electronics. There are numerous ways you could categorize and lay out your site so that people will find the electronics they're looking for. Are your customers looking for ‘car stereos’ or ‘big screen’ TV’s? Or are they more likely to be seeking specific brands of electronics? Your search engine optimization company  or web design team should be able to help you choose a package or program that will account for either the specific e-commerce type programs, or a more wide-spread approach.   Most likely, your keyword research will show you that people are looking for electronics in many different ways. Make sure your site's navigation showcases the various ways of searching. Make sure you have links to specific-brand pages as well as specific age categories of electronics.

5. Design your site to be search engine friendly. The search engines can't fill out forms or search your site.  It can't read Java script links, or see your flash intro.  Menu’s graphics, and all the beautiful lights and graphics that you paid for…the engines are blind to all of it.  This doesn't mean that you can't use these things on your site of course; it’s just not the part the engines look at. They take random samplings, rather than using drop-down sequence of menus to choose a category or a brand of something.  Cater to that.  The search engine crawlers will never find those resulting pages unless you make them visible. You'll need to make sure that you always have some form of HTML code in the main navigation section of the code on every page.  It links to the top-level pages of your site and from those pages, you'll need to have further HTML links to the individual product/service pages.  All this creates depth.   

6. Label your text links and clickable image alt texts as clearly as possible. Your site visitors and the search engines look at the clickable portion of your links (aka the anchor text) to help them identify what they're going to find once they click through. Don't make them guess what's at the other end with links that say "click this" or other non-descriptive texts that leave people unsure. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. The nice thing about writing your anchor text and alt attributes to be descriptive is that you can usually describe the page you're pointing them at by using its main keywords.  Making these keyword phrases appear more commonly throughout your site gives the search engines more to grab onto, and hopefully in your target market of searcher.   

7. Write compelling copy for the main pages of your site.  Believe it or not, people have brains.  Although on the internet, people tend to rely on as many pictures and graphics as possible to draw their attention, once you have it, they may want to actually read about what you do.  Why not make it interesting and fun content, so they stick around?  With your search engine optimization company, choose keyword phrases that make sure your copy can be “seen” by the engines.   This is a crucial component to having a successful website. The search engines need to read keyword-rich copy on your pages so they can understand how to classify your site. This copy shouldn't be buried in graphics or hidden in Flash. Write your copy based on your most relevant keyword phrases while also making an emotional connection with your site visitor.  Its important to take into account both sides of the equation.  Granted, there is no perfect number of times your key words can appear among your content, but that said…know the search engines are certainly smart enough to know if you just repeat your key word over and over.  They call it stacking and it’s the quickest way to get banned.  Use your keyword phrases only when and where it makes sense to do so for the “actual people” reading your site.

8. Incorporate your keyword phrases into each page's ‘Title’ tag. Title tags are critical because they're given a lot of weight with every search engine.  Make sure your search engine optimization company is aware of how to get your site noticed. Whatever keywords you've written your page around should also be used in your Title tag. Remember that the information that you place in this tag is what will show up as the clickable link to your site at the search engines, so design your seo campaign around the same words. Make sure that it accurately reflects the content of the page it's on, while also using the keyword people might be using at a search engine to find you.  New Pulse Management has search engine optimization experts who can help you establish the right campaign and obtain the placement and traffic you need. 

9. The holy grail of search engine optimization is links.  Other sites linking to yours is among the most critical components of a successful search engine optimization campaign, as all of the major search engines place a fair amount of weight on your site's overall link popularity. You can try to reach out for thousands of links, but if your site stinks, why would anyone really care to link to it? On the other hand, if your site is full of wonderful, useful information, other sites will naturally link to it organically.  Trading links is fine; just make sure you are providing your traffic with only the highest quality of related sites.  If its garbage you don’t want to visit, your users probably don’t want to visit either.  When you link to dumpy sites, guess what it says to your site visitors as well as to the search engines?

10. Spread the keyword love around. Don’t worry about ranking and don’t focus on one specific key word too much.  Use lots of them, to organically increase your results.  If you've done the other 9 things in our list, you will start to see your visitor counts start to increase somewhat quickly.  Our search engine optimization experts can help you carve out traffic for an appropriate amount of key words.  Forget about where you rank for any specific keyword phrase and instead measure your results in increased traffic, sales, and conversions.  We encourage our customers to allow us to set up a Google Analytics account which easily tracks and measures those things that matter.  It also creates a nice transparency between you and your seo company.  Granted, you probably don’t want to sit around reviewing your sites specific traffic statistics and examining your audiences specific demographics, but that’s why you hire us.  New Pulse Management’s team of search engine optimization experts can tailor an seo campaign or incorporate the web design your company needs to reach the right audience.  It never hurts to add new content to your site either.  In fact the search engines to a certain degree check to see how current your content is.  If its stagnant copy, the engines can tell.  Adding a blog is a great way to keep things new, fresh, and up to date.  That said, don’t add simply for the sake of beefing up your site.  The engines are fairly sophisticated at this point, and you’re better off only adding what really makes your site more useful rather than focusing on a strictly depth-based approach. It really is okay to have a business site that is just a business site and not a diatribe on the history of your products. Neither your site visitors nor the engines care!