PeakDriver

One of the biggest problems you confront when beginning to do your own SEO, is where to start. There is no set answer because it depends on where you find yourself. Most people who begin the SEO journey are dissatisfied with the traffic going to their site or would like to rank higher for particular search terms on Google and other search engines. So this means you have a website. The first thing I recommend is making sure you are registered with Google and the other main search engines like Bing and Dogpile. For Google, it is pretty easy, and all you have to do is submit the address of your home page to their “submit URL page”. Bing has pretty much the same procedure. Another step that I highly recommend for on-site SEO is to use Google Maps. If you have any possibility of getting business from your local market, it’s a great idea to set yourself up with this service. Simply go to Maps and click on “Put your business on Google Maps”. Follow the directions and you are on your way. Be careful about the keywords you use however. Take a look at other sites listed in your area and try to stake a claim to a search term (keyword) that is special to your business. Otherwise, you may have a problem ranking in the top 10. This is especially serious for Google maps users, because most visitors will never make it past the first page. The final very simple thing to get you started is to make sure you have an XML sitemap in your public directory. Ask your web designer (if you have one) or if you are doing your own site I recommend going to a fabulous site, xml-sitemaps and use their tool to create you own free xml map that you can then upload to your public directory. If you are having problems with this, site-maps has an excellent about page that explains everything you wanted to know. These simple steps including creating your sitemap will make a real difference and make you website easier to find.