Increase Optimization Results: 3 Techniques Most Websites Forget

Building your website can be an overwhelming experience simply because there are so many different components to manage. Getting your website done and live is the first and most important step. Once your site is live, the optimization and marketing for your website can begin.

I advise my clients to implement one strategy at a time. Not only will this help you gauge the effects your efforts have on your site traffic and search ranking, but it will also help make your efforts more manageable.

With that said, here are three key things that I often see left out of the optimization process:

Home Page Content

Often, the home page is the least thought out page on your site, offering only a basic welcome message. What most entrepreneurs don’t understand is that when it comes to getting found by search engines, your website’s home page is the most important page in your site. Your home page should be a concise summary of the rest of your website content, providing the reader and search robot a very clear picture of what information your site is providing and communicate why a visitor should view the rest of your website.

ALT Tags

Alt tags are used in the HTML of a website to label images and graphics. These labels tell the search robots what the image is and how it is related to the content on the page. Just about every image on your website should have an alt tag and if the image is relevant to the content on the page, having an alt tag associated with it becomes even more important. For example, if your are an author and you have a web page dedicated to your recent book, the alt tag “Name Of Book by Your Name” would be a great alt tag for the image of your book cover. By adding the alt tag to your images, you are increasing your pages chance of being found and indexed by the search engines.

XML Site Maps

Every website should have an XML site map. If your have a very large site, an HTML site map can help your visitors find a specific page on your website quickly. An XML site map is used behind-the-scenes to communicate the structure and flow of your website and it can be submitted directly to Google. Several free XML site map generators are available online, such as www.xml-sitemaps.com (I use this one), www.inspyder.com/SitemapCreator, and www.PowerMapper.com/xml-sitemaps.