Let’s take a look at how you can promote your website for free – that is, without spending any money, because it will take your time! This is a large area, so I’ll deal with it over the next 2 or 3 posts – maybe more.
So be sure to subscribe to either my RSS feed or email updates (both are free) so that you can get the full series.
OK – let’s get on with it…
There are two areas you need to focus on to effectively promote your site for free: things you can do on your site, and things you can do off your site – throughout the rest of the web.
Things to do on your site:
The first step is to get your site optimised as far as possible for the search engines. Getting your site optimised for the search engines also breaks down into 2 areas: on site optimisation and off-site optimisation.
Off site Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is basically about building lots of high quality incoming links to your site and, since we’re looking at on-site tactics here, I’ll come back to that next time.
On site SEO is about making it easy for the search engines to find your site, to find out what it’s about and to find their way around your site.
Here are some things you can do to make their job easier:
1. Install a sitemap in the root directory of your site.
If you’re not familiar with them, you can create a site map here. It’s very straightforward – just follow the instructions they give you and then upload the sitemap to your root directory.
2. Make sure that your robots.txt file allows the search engine spiders to crawl your site.
By default the spiders will crawl if there’s no robots.txt file, so if you don’t see a robots.txt file on your site you’re OK. If you do see one, open it up and make sure there’s nothing there that says *DisAllow.
If there is, change it to *Allow or just delete the entire phrase which ends in *DisAllow. The default action the spiders will take is to crawl your site, unless they are ‘DisAllowed’.
3. Use the Google Webmaster tools to register your site, identify and fix any problems and make sure the Google bots are crawling it.
If you have a Google account you can use their webmasters tools free of charge. If you don’t have a Google account you can get one for free and I highly recommend it. They have lots of excellent tools for webmasters.
If you already have a Gmail account then you’re all set – all you need to do is go into your account settings and add Google Webmaster Tools.
The webmaster tools will enable you to register your sites. After confirming that they’re yours, you’ll have access to tools and analytics that will alert you to any problems on your site, and make it more accessible to the Google bot.
4. Make sure that your META data is fully completed on each page of your site.
Make sure that it’s unique to each page as well, especially titles, descriptions and keywords.
If you’re not sure what META data is or how to set it up, click here. Fill in the fields on that page and then click the link at the bottom to generate the code.
A new window will open with the META data. Just copy and paste this into the source view of your web page, at the top, between the HEAD and /HEAD tags.
Again – just follow the instructions. They’re very straightforward.
5. Make sure you use your main keywords thoughtfully in your H1 and H2 tags as well as throughout your content.
But, very important, don’t stuff keywords!
Remember that people, not search engines, buy from you. So make sure that each page in your site is written for people, not search engines! Over repetition of keywords will just turn people off and they’ll click away.
Remember that since your META data is unique to each page your keywords should be as well. On each page you should have H1 and H2 tags. Make sure that the keywords for each page appear in these tags and throughout your text.
But, again, write for people not the search engines! It’s far more important for people to read and like your content than the search engines, and here’s why:
Ultimately off-site SEO has more impact on your search engine rankings than on-site SEO. And off-site SEO is primarily about high quality incoming links.
One way to achieve high quality incoming links is through people liking your page and linking to it. But to do that they first have to like it, which means that you need to write for them. Not the search engines!
Here are some more posts from around the web on simple things you can do to make the search engines’ job easier:
6 Simple Search Engine Optimization Strategies Guaranteed To … – Reviewing your site from time to time, implementing the necessary changes, and keeping abreast of the newest trends in Search Engine Optimization will definitely ensure your site achieves a top ranking for your chosen keywords and key …
Guide To Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization – Search engine optimization is implemented to make your website or blog site accessible to all search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo!, and MSN among others. These search engines store your website information in their vast …
Website Optimisation Techniques – As well as link building and on-page optimisation, there are some other very important SEO factors which can help your website index and rank in search engine listings. The following techniques are grouped into the category named …
OK, next time we’ll take a look at off-page SEO – so stay tuned!
If you can add anything to these guidelines please leave us a comment!
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Thanks for the great tips! I find it very useful.
Good advice for do it-your-self SEO. Great coverage of the basics!
Thanks for your kind comments, SEO,
Cheers,
Martin.