We have often said that you control your own destiny when it comes to how your website ranks on Search Engines. If you have a dynamic website, this is especially true. Also, for the majority of companies, updating your website is the best way of communicating with your most important clients – current clients. Part of updating your site is knowing how to update it effectively. Below are 11 tips that will help you when you think about updating your site.

1. Schedule Your Updates – If you just assume you will do it, you won’t. The only way to maintain regularity in regards to website updates is to put them on a calendar, and follow through. I know for myself, if it isn’t written down, it doesn’t happen.

2. Know Your Audience – If you know who you’re talking to, you will know what they want to hear. Remember, you are the expert in your field (or good at acting like it) and people trust you.

3. Don’t be Afraid to Duplicate – There is a wealth of information online, and chances are, someone has already said what you are saying, but that doesn’t mean your target audience has found it there first. If you say it, they might find it on your website first.

4. Keyword Density – When writing your updates, try to have the keywords you want your page to be ranked for in the text around 5 times per 250 words. Too many more, and Search Engines will think your stuffing, and too fewer they might not index your page for what it is intended.

5. Get to the Point – In this information age, attention spans are getting shorter every day, and on the internet that is multiplied. Say what you need to say quickly and succinctly.

6. Relative Titles – Just because you have a clever title for your news brief about your trip or a conference you attended, doesn’t mean you should use it on your site. This is another SEO tip – Search engines like titles, and the better they are at describing the content of the news article or blog post, the more effective they will be. If you can be clever AND relevant with your titles, by all means.

7. Include Pictures – This goes along with #5. Since people are ADD on the web, what grabs their attention… pictures of course. If you have to make a lengthy text update to your site, placing pictures throughout helps guide the viewers eye and hold their attention.

8. Be Confident – Don’t be afraid to say something controversial. Don’t be a sensationalist, but don’t hesitate to say state your opinion. Honesty is endearing and helps drive conversation.

9. Frequency – Repeat visitors are first, Search Engines are second. Accommodate to visitors by providing them up to date information catered to specifically to them. Your subject and audience will dictate how often you update, but once a week is a good rule. You can always schedule at least 30 minutes a week to update your website for your visitors.

10. Balance – Updates should be on a variety of different topics surrounding your core message. It’s okay to write occasional updates about a new child, or fantastic product your visitors would be interested in, just limit them. It probably isn’t a good idea to insult them with pretentious updates about your new yacht.

11. Timeliness – Keep your website up to date with information that is relevant to the surroundings. For Example – a lawn care service should update their website visitors on when they should plant grass, trim trees, grow a garden, and other seasonally relevant information.

There are many things that your site designer can do to help your site be as optimized as possible. But AT LEAST 50% of your search engine optimization is up to you, I think it’s more like 75%. Here are some of the basic things we do to make sure your site is optimized:
- build sites in DIVs with CSS
- include a keyword relevant, reasonable title for each page
- include text links to all main pages of the site
- include a site map
- place ALT tags on all images
You don’t have to understand what the heck we just said.  There are many more that we do but won’t go into here. Those are just some of the basics.

Honestly, that paragraph is far less important than this one. Here are some of the things that YOU can do to improve your SEO that will outweigh the things mentioned above:
- UPDATE YOUR SITE FREQUENTLY
- Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, whatever Social Network you use – post updates there about your site and provide links
- UPDATE YOUR SITE FREQUENTLY
- Ask friends with sites, or companies that provide complimentary but not competing services to link to you
- UPDATE YOUR SITE FREQUENTLY

All of this stuff is explained further in the Blog Post – Committing to Your Website, take a look at it.

Both are valuable and both are part of your web presence. In this series we will define what they are, how they can help, and how to utilize them.

Search Engine Optimization is defined as all the things you can do on your site, and for your site to make it more appealing and indexable by Search engines (google, yahoo, bing, etc.). For our purposes we will use Google in referencing search engines, since it is by far the most prominent and widely used (boasting over 2-3 billion searches a day)

Search Engine Marketing traffic that you pay for and control directly. This is essentially purchasing a link to your site, and then controlling exactly who sees it. You can specify your purchased ad to appear for people who search for something specific. For example, if you sell shelves, you can specify that your ad will appear on googles paid listing when people type in “cabinet shelves chattanooga” or “closet shelves tennessee”.

Below are graphics depicting paid listings and regular or “organic” listings.

Some people say that SEO encompasses SEM and some will argue the opposite. They are both valuable to your overall web presence though.