If your website is like a billboard stuck in the desert, you are not alone. The majority of websites are established with great prospects in mind, yet not enough attention is given to specifics to ensure that the website message actually reaches its market.

Whatever line of business you’re in, whether you are selling a product or a service, your web presence must be related to specific keywords. These keywords very precisely define your area of expertise or your product or service. Your potential clients will use keywords to search within Google for solutions. If your website is not adequately optimized in relation to the magic keywords, you may as well erect a billboard in the desert.

There are some key fundamentals that you must bear in mind if you are going to aim for top listings in Google searches. This is where you must be if you want to develop a steady stream of traffic to your website, composed of people who are actively searching for your product or service.

1. Firstly, you must choose your keywords very carefully. Often you will need to be quite specific and your keywords may in fact be three, four or five words. This is known as a “long tail” and it’s a specific description of your product or service. For example, if you breed a certain type of dog and your website sells these services, you would not try and rank for “dog” as this is far too broad and will not focus on your market. Rather, you should try and rank for a long tail, such as “yellow Labrador retriever.”

2. Make sure that there is an adequate amount of demand for your keywords and that there is not an over abundance of supply. In other words, use some of the fantastic tools available, such as Google’s fabulous free tool. See how many people search for your exact keywords on a monthly basis. Then, go to the Google search box and enter one of your keywords in quotes (“”), and this will give you a good idea how many competing sites you have to deal with.

3. Ensure that your site is optimized for your keywords. This includes basic SEO work, including your keywords within the title, description, meta-tags, H1 tags and so on. If you don’t know how to do this, make sure that your webmaster does it for you, as it will be specific to your site package. This is however only part of the optimization story, as above all you must make sure that your website contains very specific material. Not only will Google ignore your site if the content does not directly refer to your keywords, but visitors to your site will click away immediately and not return. Therefore, within the content of your site, be it an article or just on-page text, make sure that you include your chosen keywords several times as well as other words directly related to your particular niche.

4. Try and establish good relationships with other organizations in your line of business. If you have suppliers who you work with, try and get them to provide a link back to your site, especially if they are well-established and have websites that Google recognizes already. Google has a system called “page rank,” which describes the authority given by the company to that site. If a site has a higher page rank, the fact that they are linking back to your site will be viewed very highly by Google. Establishing back links in this way will really help to elevate your site.

If you follow these fundamentals, you will find that you have a much better chance of attracting visitors back to your site, as you will have laser targeted information to give them. Google recognizes that you do as well, and this should raise the profile of your site within those multiple pages of search engine results to best effect.

How do you rank with Google?

Adam Toren