SEO | Internet Marketing Association of Hawaii

Posts tagged: SEO

Local Search Engine Optimization

hawaii What Is Local SEO?

Local Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of optimizing your website or blog for local search. If you’re just getting started, the idea of search engine optimization might sound a little intimidating, and it can be. So, before you read the next paragraph, take a deep breath, get a cup or coffee or a beer and relax. I’m going to show you five things you can do to start making your Hawaii website easily findable.

How It Works

To start, it’s important to understand a few basic concepts about how search engines work and why you want to optimize your website for them. Imagine a search engine as a big (really big) library. The librarian has the task of looking at, and sorting billions of websites and placing them on a digital shelf where they can be easily retrieved. No easy task for the librarian I assure you.

Your job, as the author of the website, is to make it as easy as possible for the librarian to do her job. When you make it clear to the librarian what your website is about, she can quickly and accurately store it for easy retrieval. If you don’t make it clear what your website is about, she will either set your material aside to be sorted later or store it on the wrong shelf where it will never be found. This is why optimizing your website is so important.

Top 5 Ways to Optimize your Hawaiian Website

1. Before you create a new web page, think about the words and phrases your customer would use to describe your content to the Google librarian. Then, use those words and phrases in your page title, headline text and body text. In Internet marketing circles, this is known as keyword research.

2. Each website or blog is made up of multiple web pages. Since the search engines sort and store web pages and not web sites, make sure that each web page focuses on only one subject. It’s a lot easier to accurately sort and store a web page about Hawaii sunsets than it is to sort and store a page about sunsets in Hawaii, California, Vermont and Georgia. If you’re going to talk about sunsets in multiple locations, consider creating a web page for each location.

3. Create a link from the front page of your website to each new page on your website. If this is not possible, place a sitemap on your website so that the search engines and human visitors can easily navigate to each and every page of your site from your home page. For more information on sitemaps and how to install them, please visit Google Sitemaps.

4. Most website creation programs like Dreamweaver and GoLive allow you to create descriptions for each page of your website in the description meta tag. If you have this option, create a one sentence description of your web page using the same words and phrases you used in your text. It’s also a good idea to write the description meta-tag with a call to action to encourage the people who read your description to visit your Hawaii website.

5. Once your web page has been created, ask your Hawaii friends to link to your new web page from their Hawaii website or blog. As far as the Google librarian is concerned, if other websites think your content is worth linking to, it’s probably important enough for Google to immediately sort and store your web page for others to find.

There are certainly other, more technical things that can be done to optimize your Hawaii website, but few will have the impact of the five tips listed above. Go forth and optimize.

Level of Difficulty

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

SEO Resources