One of the biggest challenges businesses face today is maintaining relevance in the eyes of the search engines- and there are a vast number of these available on the Internet, although Google is the one that really counts when it comes to rankings controlling more than 90% of the search traffic in the US alone (as much as we miss good ole Jeeves). This means that for your website to reap the benefits of rankings, you need to aim your SEO campaign at Google.

Here are the key ways to improve the SEO strength of your website.

1)     Create a blog

Search engines love fresh content, and if updated regularly, it will provide you with a distinct SEO advantage. Blogs naturally attract search engine traffic as well as adding value to your website and increasing the likelihood of potential customers social bookmarking it and sharing it within their social networks. Furthermore try producing content which is not time sensitive, as it’s an easy way to boost search engine optimization by producing content which won’t go out-of-date. Create content that people will be glad to read now, and in 10-years time.

2)     Do some guest blogging

Guest blogging is a great method of driving new customers to your website. Make sure that the guest blogs all link back to your website and that they are relevant to your website.

3)       Create relevant blog titles

A simple SEO tip revolves around the working of their content or blog titles. Many search engine spiders initially read the first few lines of a webpage to determine the topic of the content. Your SEO will be hugely improved by including your top-ranking keywords in the title of your article.

4)     Think about your customer needs

One of the quickest and simplest ways to achieve good SEO is with good keyword selection. Put yourself in your readers shoes and think about the actual words they may type into Google in order to find information or your website. Then be sure to include your SEO keywords in your website content.

5)     Links, Links, Links

Google loves links- simples! Be sure that the links you add are genuine and link to and from other authoritative websites. You can run the risk of blacklisting your website and wrecking a good SEO campaign by either purchasing links or blogging on unrelated sites and linking back to your site.

6)     Create an informative video

Another great SEO tool is informational videos with links back to your website. Businesses can create a short video explaining what they do, who they are etc., while vendors can demonstrate their products if appropriate. Distribute your video over multiple platforms too to further increase your Google ranking.

7)      Update your website often

Adding regular content to your website on a daily or bi-daily basis will be recognized by Google and other big search engines as an authority in its niche. Furthermore, by changing your choice of SEO keywords regularly, you will begin to rank highly for a good selection of keywords. If you don’t have the time to create new SEO oriented blogs on a daily basis, hire a blog writer to do it for you. On-going content creation is one of the easiest SEO techniques to master, and will improve your Google rank over time.

     Reduce code bloat

Firstly avoid flash-based websites. There is no doubt flash websites look stylish, expensive and pretty awesome- but they don’t sit will with Google or your SEO efforts. It is difficult to make Google notice Flash websites, so it makes sense to stay away and use another platform if you aim to improve your ranking. Secondly, Google spiders are searching for unique content, and JavaScript and CSS in the HTML code make it harder for them to find, i.e. all scripts and CSS files should be added as external files to reduce the time it takes for search engine spiders to find the actual content as well as reducing the content-to-content ratio.

9)     Use article submission sites

Article submission sites are a great SEO tool as they distribute a single article to hundreds of article directories with the aim of getting it published and noticed. Articles you submit can be published by others for free, although any website that chooses to use your article must include your bio and a link back to your website. Although this method is usually not free, it is worth the spend as it can cut months of your SEO campaign.

10)       Use meta description tags

<meta> description tags are what appear in the search engine results page and give the web surfer an overview of what the site is about. Be sure to write a description which convinces visitors to click on your result. Note, Google uses meta description tags to differentiate web pages, so be careful to describe each page differently and avoid any duplicate content. Lastly, make sure to limit the <meta> description tags to 160 characters in length, including spaces.