Optimizing Your Website, choosing the right keywordsThink of search engine ranking as the ultimate Web popularity contest. Most businesses want to to achieve high ranking in search engine result pages (SERP) to attract more customers to their site. Here are a few simple tips for optimizing your website.

Write high-quality unique content

Probably the most important factor is to have great content on your site. Give visitors a compelling reason to visit your website by providing content that is different from other sites. Otherwise, visitors have no reason to stick around and search engines won’t find your site valuable.

Write strong meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are one of the hidden elements of a website used by search engines which appear as the description in a search engine result page (SERP). Describe each page of your website accurately and uniquely as this helps potential customers find your site.

Try to have as many inbound links as you can

Links from sites other than your own are called inbound links. Getting many of inbound links will help your page ranking. Keep in mind that 1-2 links from high-reputation sites are better than 10 links from link farms. Search engines long ago caught on to this practice any don’t put the same value on links from these types of services.

Make those inbound links count

Inbound links from sites similar to your own are important. What this indicates is that your site has content related to that particular subject. If your competition finds your site valuable, it gives your site more credibility.

Have a sitemap

Search engines love sitemaps—not necessarily for ranking, but for finding links on your site. Creating an XML sitemap or Google sitemap, even a plain HTML sitemap works just as well.

Google offers a helpful starter guide to understanding SEO optimization. Optimizing your website by following these simple practices can help your site rank higher in the competitive world of search engine ranking.