Search Engine Maintenance - An Hour a Month
Spending time every month to check your website’s positions in major search engines using your search keywords is a good idea. And once you see where your business website comes up in Google, Yahoo!, MSN and other search engines what do you do with that information.
What keywords are working for you and bringing you up on the first page in search? It’s nice to see your website in one of the top 8 positions on page one! That means you have rich keyword content on the page, a good page title and description and good links. It also means your code is pretty good with your “alt” tags on your images filled in and good outlining.
Now your goal is to stay in that good search position and get your other pages up there also. That is where search engine maintenance for an hour a month comes in.
For our clients this hour is spent first checking to see where the webpage comes up with the client’s keywords. If the client has slipped down in the page ranking then it is time to “tweak” the tags, the titles and see where the page text can be “tweaked” to boost keyword density without losing readability for the visitors to the site. After all the website is there to provide information and services to human visitors first and appeal to the search engine robots and spiders second.
If the website has been up for a number of years it might be time to take a look at the outline code and make sure heading tags are coded correctly helping your reader scan through the page for the information they are looking for and guiding the SE robots to your main points also.
The other elements of the website are also good to look at also. Check and make sure that each image has an alternative tag to make your site accessible for people with disabilities (Section 508 compliant). Add titles to your images also using appropriate keywords.
Regular monthly search engine maintenance helps to keep your website fresh and updated. Even just looking at the website can remind you to change the marquee because the September trade show is done and it is on to a new month and a new trade show!
What if you don’t have time to spend or the knowledge of code to do this? Well, then you hire an Internet Marketing professional to do it for you.