Glad to be back, everyone! Here is the second half of my step by step guide to optimizing your website to show up in Google and other search engines. Please note again that I won’t be going into detail on how to actually perform each of these techniques. You’ll need to know some basic HTML coding or use a simplified website creation tool like MyActingSite for some of the steps.

Step 5: Link build.

Type into Google your keyword and then besides it the words “Post Comment” in quotes.

headshots nyc “post comment”

Or you can use the words “Leave Comment”. Or just “Comment.” This will force Google to pull up websites related to yours that allow posting comments. You then want to go onto each website and post short little comments on articles. Make sure your comments are relevant and intelligent. This will help both draw traffic to your site and raise your Google ranking.

Under the “Name” section, put your keyword. Under the “Email,” put your email. And under the “Website” section, put your website. And under “Post Comment,” place your comment.

Name: headshots nyc
Email: [email protected]
URL: www.cityheadshots.com
Comment: blah blah blah

This will leave a live (clickable) link on someone else’s website that points directly to your website. And since you wrote your keyword (“Headshots NYC”) as the name, it will create a link that people can click that says “Headshots NYC,” which will go directly to your site. Link text is important because when Google scours the internet, it will find links that point to your site with the text “Headshots NYC.” This tells Google that your website is about “Headshots NYC.”

Step 6: Like a fine wine, age your website.

You can’t do this quickly, but make sure you keep your site online for at least 2 years for your hard work to really take effect. The older your site is, the higher it will rank in Google.

Step 7: Link to Google.

Add a link directly to www.google.com somewhere on your site. Google will thank you by raising your rankings a bit.

Step 8: Build your trust.

Add your physical address, telephone number, and email to your website. If possible, create a Google Places listing and link it to your website. Also, make sure to create a privacy policy page. Google will respond to this by believing your site is more trustworthy, and will raise your rankings.

Step 9: Begin using Google Analytics to refine your site.

Set up a Google Analytics account and start monitoring your site. With it, you can see what pages are most popular, along with what pages people tend to drive away traffic. The more “Exits” a page has, the more likely it needs to be looked at closely and fixed. Any time a page has more than 50% Exit or Bounce rate, something is probably wrong.

Step 10: Don’t give up.

SEO is a long and time consuming process. It takes at least six months before you even start ranking for anything, but if you post blogs and comment on other blogs almost daily or at minimum weekly, and you follow all the above tips, depending on the competition level, you should start showing up on the first page of Google for your keywords within six to twelve months.

I hope this article was helpful to you! I essentially told you all the secrets that took me four years to learn. The key I feel to retaining information is simplification, which is why I wanted to simplify the process to ten steps. There are many other things that can be done for SEO, but these are the steps that will make the biggest and quickest difference for your site.

See you next month!