"Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search,[1] news search and industry-specific vertical search engines. As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic."
So, you want people to find your website? Think like a customer and put yourself in their shoes. If someone in your town turns to the internet because they need a new copier they might go to Google and type "New Jersey Copier Sales" or "City Copier Sales". Maybe they have a particular brand in mind. In that case they might search "Ricoh Copier Sales in New Jersey".
Come up with a list of keywords that describe what your product offering. Eventually the goal here is to have your site pop up first when any of these words are entered into Google.
These are the keywords I'm going after (at the moment) :
Jon Selman, Marietta Copiers, Marietta Printers, Marietta Copier Repair, Marietta Printer Repair, Marietta Toner, Marietta Toner Cartridges, Marietta Fax Machines, Marietta Managed Print, Marietta Managed Print Services, Marietta Copier Lease, Marietta Office Equipment, Atlanta Copiers, Atlanta Printers, Atlanta Copier Repair, Atlanta Printer Repair, Atlanta Toner, Atlanta Toner Cartridges, Atlanta Fax Machines, Atlanta Business Solutions, Atlanta Managed Print Services
Once you have your list of keywords established now it's time to incorporate them into the site. After all, Google isn't going to know your site is related to those words unless they're in it!
If you look through my website: www.JonSelman.com, you'll notice that, not only do I include these key words as often as possible , I also link them to other pages and write things out full length to increase the content. Google spiders crawl the website and all those things entice it to bring the page higher and higher on Google ranking by recognizing credibility and relevance to the particular keywords being searched for.
Some of the internal things I do are:
Name every page with a unique name like "Printer Repair" or Toner Cartridges".
Use H1 tags These are HTML tags given to text to show they are powerful and important to the content.
Back links These are links to your website from an outside source. These help drastically in Google page rank. I frequently post content on Social Media Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pintrest, LinkedIn and YouTube with links all going back to my site in order to 1) bring traffic and 2) increase Google page rank.
Tip: If you install Google Webmaster Tools on your site you can do some cool stuff to analyze the site traffic. I can post something on one of these social media sites and then look to see what content/site is drawing more traffic.
And last but not least, use Metadata as often as possible .
"The term metadata refers to "data about data". The term is ambiguous, as it is used for two fundamentally different concepts (types). Structural metadata is about the design and specification of data structures and is more properly called "data about the containers of data". Descriptive metadata, on the other hand, is about individual instances of application data, the data content. In this case, a useful description would be "data about data content" or "content about content" thus metacontent. Descriptive, Guide and the National Information Standards Organization concept of administrative metadata are all subtypes of metacontent.[citation needed]"
Scratch that. That was a horrible definition. lol
Metadata is HTML coding on the back end that tells Google more information about what the site is all about and where it is relevant.
An example pulled straight from the "Show Page Source" on my homepage :
meta name="keywords" content="Jon Selman, Marietta Copiers, Marietta Printers, Marietta Copier Repair, Marietta Printer Repair, Marietta Toner, Marietta Toner Cartridges, Marietta Fax Machines, Marietta Managed Print, Marietta Managed Print Services, Marietta Copier Lease, Marietta Office Equipment, Atlanta Copiers, Atlanta Printers, Atlanta Copier Repair, Atlanta Printer Repair, Atlanta Toner, Atlanta Toner Cartridges, Atlanta Fax Machines, Atlanta Business Solutions, Atlanta Managed Print Services" />