SEO Resolutions for 2010

2010 is just around the corner. Have you already chosen your New Year’s resolutions? How about including some search engine optimization (SEO) resolutions in your list? Those are the resolutions that you definitely should keep.

Your SEO resolutions may not help you to lose weight or exercise more but they may help you to slim down your budget and fatten your bank account. The following are some suggested SEO resolutions that will help you to increase your business.

Resolve to do an SEO audit of your website: Take time to review your index page and each of your inside pages. If your site is very large (thousands of pages), go over the pages that you feel are in need of more traffic first. Work your way through the list to the other pages after that.

The audit can be as easy as making sure that your title tags match the content on the pages themselves and implementing the appropriate alternative text on your images. If you want to do a more advanced audit, you can rebuild a page to target a different set of keywords or key phrases or edit your whole site to highlight your header tags.

Resolve to do more research on keywords: Have your products and services changed since your website was built or updated last? If they have, you should identify which keywords you should add or delete. Please bear in mind that SEO is an ongoing process. It is important to make sure that the keywords that you originally put into your website are still relevant and effective.

A good way to identify new and effective keywords and phrases is to be diligent about performing ongoing research. You can follow trends and apply them to your website as well as speaking with your website visitors. Another useful approach is to follow your competitors’ websites as well as the search result pages where your competitors’ sites appear.

Resolve to update your content: Take at least 1 hour a week to write fresh content. One way to go is to complete already-existing product reviews with new keywords. An easy (and excellent) method of creating content is to start writing a blog. Your list of topics might include articles about your products and services, feedback that you have gotten from satisfied customers, or any other article on a topic that is of interest to you and is also relevant to your website. You should update your blog often and on a regular basis and make sure that your audience can get to the articles easily.

Advertising the accessibility of RSS feeds gives you greater exposure and also allows your loyal customers access to content that may push them to act on your unique products and services.

Resolve to be involved with social media sites and networks: Is your website connected to LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace? Are there other industry-specific social media sites that you should connect with? Social networks are gaining more and more momentum all of the time and continue to increase audience members. Connecting with social media sites is a quick and easy way to increase your business’ exposure.

In some ways, it is as though you have several websites, with increased exposure and links. Additionally, social networks provide your business with a great deal of potential for collecting new leads (just within your own social networks). Social media sites are great places to create awareness of your business, build links, and to keep traffic moving throughout the year.

Get involved with Industry discussions: Devote time every week to reading and commenting on your favorite blogs. Add relevant and useful conversations in your comments. Interesting and compelling comments build your profile and can provide valuable links back to your website.

Resolve to measure your SEO success with analytics: Use a good website analytics service so that you will be able to correctly understand how to measure the success of your business. Successful SEO is not always going to equal more sales so you need to make sure that you track the correct metrics, such as rankings on your keyword hit list and traffic from search engines.

The beginning of the New Year is the perfect time to evaluate and hone your SEO strategy. Keep your SEO strategy sharp and effective. Make sure that you continue to network, do as much research as possible in order to keep your knowledge current, and pay close attention to trends and patterns so that you can use them as effectively as possible for your business.

We are pleased to provide you the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.