Search engine optimization is vital to the success of your website.  After all, if people can’t find your website, what good is it?  But there's a catch - the best way to write content so that a page ranks well for Google isn’t the best way to write for your customers or from a marketing standpoint.  Let’s discuss this issue and take a look at why Joomla is a good solution for improving your search engine rankings.

The key to search engine success is proper use of keyphrases in good, relevant content.

A key phrase is the text that people type into their search engine to find relevant web pages.  You want to be careful to choose keywords that are not overly generic or not sufficiently relevant.  Most keyphrases are from two to four words in length.

There are online tools available to help you create a search engine friendly website. If you’re doing your own SEO work we suggest you begin your research with Google Webmasters Support - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/

If you’re hiring someone else (like CompuSolver.com) to do your SEO work, be sure they will follow Google’s guidelines and that they work with your marketing team.  As we’ve said before, it does no good to bring visitors to a web page that is not put together with marketing expertise but it also does little good to have a website with great marketing, if people can’t find it.

Like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, marketing and SEO must “dance” together for your web pages to be truly effective.

Here are a few tips for any brave DIY SEO people out there –

1. Limit keyphrases to one or two per web page.  You’ll just water down their effectiveness by cramming numerous keyphrases into a single page.
2. Have your web professional (or CompuSolver) check your server log files, or Google Analytics to see what keyphrases people are using to find your site.  Check competitors’ sites to see which phrases they’re optimized for.  Use this information to help choose the keyphrases you want to optimize for on your website.
3. Use only keyphrases that are relevant to your web page content and to the goals for that page.
4. Utilize image ALT and TITLE tags, italics, hyperlinks, bold, etc., to emphasis keyphrases.  Utilize meta tags like TITLE, DESCRIPTION and even KEYWORDS.
   (ignore the fact that some search engines claim to ignore KEYWORDS).
5. Avoid having pages duplicate content, page titles, meta descriptions, etc.  Don’t have “shadow” (duplicate) domains.
6. Don’t use keyphrases in colors that approximate background colors to hide them from visitors but “show” them to search bots.
7. Do not create so-called “doorway” pages that are filled with keyphrases but without human-usable content.
8. Use internal links to pages where the text of the link is the same as the keyphrase for that page.  Do the same for external links coming into the page, but remember you only want external links from sites that are related to your industry – using “link farms” will likely backfire.
9. A rough rule of thumb is to use your keyphrase about once in every 100 words of content and to have three to five hundred words on each page.  This does not count usage in ALT tags, etc.
10. If your SEO expert is not also your marketing expert, make both work together on copy.  Do not write rough-sounding copy just to satisfy your SEO goals.

I hope this has helped you put together a good search engine optimization plan that will integrate well with your website marketing plan.  If it sounds like too much work, remember that CompuSolver can handle all these details for you.

We also offer WebPosition4 search engine ranking reports and Page Critic analysis.