Use SEO to Bring Your Neglected Site Back to Life

It is easy as a small business owner or entrepreneur to start a website and then forget about it for a long period of time. It is also just as easy for someone to put a lot of work into their businesses’ website in the first month and then forget about it. After sitting for a while there is a lot of momentum lost, and it can be very difficult to get back. There are millions of websites on the web (maybe billions) with hundreds of thousands going up daily, if you let your site slip into hibernation it is easy for Google – and, more importantly, your potential clients – to forget about it. Here are some items below that should help get things headed in the right direction again. (This is typically what I do in the first week of SEO services).

* Optimization of Title Tags - The title tags are the titles of each page that show up on the top of the internet browser and as the title of the site page in search engine results. I will go through all the pages on the site and rewrite the title tags to include accurate, descriptive titles of the page content as well as important keywords relevant to the webpage. This makes visitors more likely to click on the site in search engine results. It also makes the search engines rank the site higher for keyword search terms.

* Optimization of Meta Descriptions – The Meta descriptions are the descriptions of webpages that show up under the title in the search engine result pages. Similar to the title tags, I rewrite the Metadescriptions of every page to include more detailed descriptions of what the page is about and make the site more attractive to visitors.

* Optimization of Existing Site Content –I also go through all of the site’s pages to optimize content with strong keywords, anchor text (internal links), html heading tags and more. I review the content and check for grammar and vocabulary errors. I don’t change the actual information of the text content unless it’s necessary to fix grammatical errors.

* Repairing All Broken Links on the Site – I will go through the site and repair all the broken links so that the entire site displays efficiently.

* Setting Up a 301 Redirect – A 301 redirect will automatically direct visitors who land on http://yoursite.com to the “www.” version of the URL, http://www.yoursite.com

* Correcting URL structure issues – If possible, I will rename page files to shorten URL addresses of pages and include descriptive keyword in the file names. At the beginning there may be many different folders to navigate through to get to pages, so I try to shorten URLs without interfering with site functionality. This makes the site easy for search engines and visitors to navigate.

Adding 10-15 new pages of quality content also helps, and the practice of continually adding said content will “trains” Google and other search engines to see that your site is not neglected and is a source of great, authoritative content that is updated consistently.

It also makes sense to sumit your site to high quality, authoritative directories. The best ones to list your site in are:

* Yahoo! Directory
* DMOZ
* Business.com
* WhatUSeek
* Best of the Web
* JoeAnt

Make a commitment to adding new, fresh content to your site at least twice a week. Finding topics to write about can be difficult. One method I suggest is using the Google Keyword Tool to generate some ideas. If you type in a word related to your business, look for related words that make a good article, for example:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Using the keyword: “central vac systems” as an example we see several interesting article options.

Keywords:

central vacuum systems

central vac systems

central vacuums systems

central vac system

beam central vac systems

central vac systems in

for central vac systems

air vac central vacuum systems

vac central vacuum systems

There won’t always be article ideas that jump out, but you could write a few articles about “beam central vac systems” or “air vac.” The keyword tool will automatically sort the words that get the most traffic, so you should work your way down that list. If you are a local business working on your own internet marketing, make sure if you search for keywords revolving around your city. For example, you could research “Central Vac Systems Chicago” to get a good list of local keywords to write about. Make sure to incorporate keyword phrases that include your city’s name in your new content.

If you let your website sit stagnant for too long, it can be difficult to get the ball rolling again. It will take a recommitment to your site, spending at least a few days a week on it. Once you get into the habit of things, the work isn’t really difficult. If you are a small business doing your own internet marketing, it is important to make this a part of your weekly schedule or hire someone to do so. Allowing a site to gather dust can be an expensive and time consuming mistake to reverse.