Optimizing in More Than One Way

My head almost starts spinning when thinking about all the ways to increase search engine optimization for a Web site. I’ve missed so many opportunities over the past couple years writing my blog to gain money from Google AdSense (not that I would have made that much money, but you never know), and even in just knowing that more people could have read and commented on my work because I just placed content on a site without paying attention to search engine optimization.

A Web site could have the world’s best content, but it no one can find it, it’s useless. Search Engine Optimization is another way to draw users to your site and possibly get a return on all your hard work creating that content.

John Chow’s Web site is a great example of how search engine optimization, along with well-placed online ads can turn into a lucrative venture. Chow now makes $40,000 a month from the ads on his site. How does he get the money from the ads? Because people are led to his site through things like meta-tags, but also, because he provides useful searchable content (commentary that is sometimes corny, but hey- it worked for him!) that gives people advice on how to make money online themselves—content that is highly valuable.

I feel like many of the things that will rank your page higher, such as giving your pages descriptive titles, creating strong content, and organizing pages logically will also make your job maintaining the Web site easier. For example, this PR-Inside article recommends naming all your images with their real names and including a description in the alt tag. It seems obvious, but when building a site in a hurry, it could be easy to just post a picture without adding alt tags or naming it something descriptive. Organizing images and giving them alt descriptions not only makes the site more searchable, but causes the creators of the site to evaluate the worth of the images, in turn helping them make better decisions about what to place on the site.

Search engine optimization can also benefit from using social media to help promote your page. Besides keeping the image of an organization current and providing information in a number of places, it helps drive traffic to both the social media site and the Web site or a company.

According to this Larry Brauner’s Online Social Networking Blog, linking to social media not only drives new users to your Web site, but also increased the amount of links to and from your site, which also increases your page rank. Using social media as part of your Web presence is smart for a number of reasons.