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Weekly Advice: How to Climb High in Google's Rankings?

This always seems to be the BIG question for wedding professionals who have a website. This topic is called search engine optimization (SEO), which is the process of improving the volume of natural traffic to a website from search engines. A wedding professional who can master this will get free web traffic. Not only that, the traffic will be of high quality because it will be comprised of users who are looking for that wedding professional's particular service.
It is an absolute must to think through SEO before creating a website. Be sure to ask your web designer to address these rules as they create and/or update your site. As you read through these rules, also know that search engines are always changing their algorithms AND it takes time for search engines to recognize changes that you make to your site. Nonetheless, here are twelve helpful tips that I've learned along the way, which can help your website climb to the top of Google's rankings.

Rule #1: Remember that the search engines' main goal is to present the most relevant and useful information to its users. If someone types 'wedding advice' into Google, then the websites with the most useful information about wedding advice will appear. Therefore, do your best to have a website that presents the most relevant, useful, and fresh content about your specialty.

Rule #2: Choose two to three keywords that you want people to associate your site with. Ask yourself - what are the keywords that you want someone to type in Google in order to find your site? It is helpful to use the Google Keyword Tool to find out what keywords are popular. Be sure not to pick the most popular keywords because other more mature sites will beat you at those rankings. Instead, choose keywords that are less popular or less competitive, so that you will have a better chance of rising to the top of the rankings.

Rule #3: If possible, incorporate these keywords in your url or website address.

Rule #4: Include these keywords in each page's title. The title is written within the page's code and is what you see way up at the top of your screen when you are viewing a web page.

Rule #5: Include these keywords in each page's description. This is written within the page's code and is what appears when your site comes up in a Google listing.

Rule #6: Include these keywords in each page's meta-tags (also within the page's code).

Rule #7: Include these keywords in the body of each page but it is important to remember that you should not over use keywords. A general rule of thumb is that these keywords should only make up about 7% of the page's content.

Rule #8: Do not use a lot of photos or flash (animated pictures) because search engines can not read this. This is usually a challenge for wedding photographers who absolutely need to show off their work. As a solution, make sure that you name each photo file with one to four very descriptive keywords. And if your website has a lot of flash, add a page that is strictly html in order to include important keywords and to let Google know what your site is about.

Rule #9: Partner with other relevant wedding sites to have them point links toward your site. You can go to BridalTweet's Vendor Link Exchange Group to find sites to partner with. You should also add relevant website links to your site, which point outward.

Rule #10: Refresh your site's content on a regular basis. The easiest way to do this is to add a wedding blog to your site.

Rule #11: Add a 'bookmark this site' link to your site. Search engines like sites that are bookmarked.

Rule #12: Have a sitemap. This helps the search engine to understand how your website is organized.

Do you know of any other tips or rules? If so, please comment below and share them with us.

About This Blog: Christine Dyer has an MBA in marketing and shares over ten years of marketing expertise with the wedding community. In this weekly blog called Supercharge Your Wedding Business, you'll find advice on an array of wedding business topics such as how to market to brides, social networking, wedding PR, wedding sales, vendor networking, branding, pricing and much more. .Please pass this news along to your own professional wedding network. To receive this advice in your email inbox each week, Sign Up for a Free BridalTweet Membership.

Comment by Juliette Senior on October 21, 2009 at 11:53am: Thank you!! This information was so helpful!!

Comment by Wine Coutures on October 24, 2009 at 9:01pm: Thank you for this very useful information.

Comment by Pamela Davis on October 25, 2009 at 4:05am: Great and useful information. Keep the good advice coming. THANKS

Comment by Lisa Marie Rovito on October 26, 2009 at 2:55pm: Great article--thank you! SEO can seem overwhelming to many of us. I think if you work to improve it a bit every day and every week, you will see results. I have scheduled a weekly time slot to devote solely to research/reading/improving SEO. Thanks, Christine! ~Lisa Marie

Comment by Jane Valdes on October 27, 2009 at 11:48am: Thank you very much for the info!

Comment by So Fabuluxe! on October 27, 2009 at 12:22pm: Excellent information!

Comment by Pamela Davis on November 3, 2009 at 7:04am: Thanks Christine for all your valuable advice. When I stated my website three years ago I spent a ton of money with Internet Advancement an SEO company and had no positive results. I ultimately had to let them go. I started to rank better on yahoo and most recently on msn after I dropped them. I'm still not there with google,so I need all the good advice I can get. I'm not the best with computers.

Comment by Cake Fiction on November 3, 2009 at 11:52pm: Very thorough summary of the top SEO tips.
Relevant content is #1
On Rule 8 make sure you also include Alt tags (alternative text which describes each image, in case a photo cannot be downloaded). On Rule 12 you don't just want a sitemap / index but you should also upload a Google sitemap to help the Google bots find your pages. Download the A1 Sitemap generator from CNET.com
Radiance is also right, the Dummies books are very good tools for DIY marketers.

Comment by Dream Wedding Italy on November 4, 2009 at 10:01am: One more tip: Wehn writing an article or a blog post just don't think SEO. Just write a GOOD article. It will be shared naturally by users if it is really relevant. Often many bloggers write posts only for seo purpose, but they forget the real goal of making information: write for your audience.