How to boost web traffic


BY JESSICA RIDGWAY  | OB WEB EDITOR

04.10.14 thumb seo-trafficSEMpdx hosted a workshop this week for entrepreneurs, website developers and others interested in search engine optimization (SEO).  Here are a few tips and tricks aimed at bumping up your search engine rankings.

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04.10.14 seo-trafficBY JESSICA RIDGWAY | OB WEB EDITOR

How do you boost your website rankings given all the other stuff that appears on Google, Yahoo and other search engines?

SEMpdx hosted a workshop this week for entrepreneurs, website developers and others interested in search engine optimization (SEO).  Here are a few tips and tricks aimed at bumping up your search engine rankings.

  • Make sure the title tag of your website (the site’s title which appears at the top of the browser/in open tabs) describes what the page is about. “Home is not a descriptive word for your home page,” said Kevin Getch of Webfor, a digital marketing agency.
  • Post high-quality content. And content goes beyond text — it’s everything that users view, read and consume on your site. Due to Natural Language Processing, Google is now capable of gaining a deeper understanding of a site’s content and a user’s search; so think in terms of topics rather than keywords.
  • “Embrace Google+ communities,” says Alex Peerenboom of Anvil Media. Not only can you promote your business and interact with prospective clients in these communities, but you can find SEO advice and communicate directly with SEO experts to help better your website.
  • Use free tools, like SEMRush, Majestic SEO and MOZ, to view your SEO rankings and compare them with your competition.
  • Educate yourself about SEO. “If you don’t know what something means, Google it,” says Kevin Bekker of the Oregonian Media Group. Understanding SEO can be highly complicated, but there are resources online that can explain how to increase your website’s presence. (Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, provides SEO video tips on his blog.)

Revamping a website can be a crazy and convoluted process. Develop a strategy and set goals before venturing into your site’s backend.