What is SEO?
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization.
Here I will be teaching you the basics of what to do so your website and landing pages display higher in the organic (free) search results of Google, Yahoo, MSN/Windows Live, and other.
OK, so here are the basics you absolutely need to do before anything else.
META Tags
You need a couple of things in your meta tags at the top of every page. first and foremost is a page title. Every page in your website needs to have its own title and they should all be different. Under no circumstances should your business name be your page title. Page title can be as much as 30% of the score for what is actually on/in the page code, including the content - that’s huge, don’t blow it.
The second meta tag you need is the “description” tag. This is useful in two different ways. First it is what people see below the title when you appear in the search results and can greatly influence whether or not searches actually click through to your page. Since it is being indexed by the search spiders, any key words/phrases that are in the description can help your rank.
You should go ahead an use all other META tags that you can, but they are of limited importance, with the possible exception of the location tag depending on your business type.
Why have I not mentioned the “keywords” meta tag? Because it is not indexed by the major search engines any more. Google has said this publicly many times now. This tag was misused far too often by pages trying to rank for phrases they had no business ranking for based on the actual visible page content. What matters now it the text actually on the page seen by the human visitor.
Page Content
Your page text should contain your key words and phrases as 3 - 5% of the total text on the page and must appear in the first 200KB of code (Image sizes do not count, just code). The higher on the page a phrase appears the more important it is deemed to be by the spiders, so put your most relevant phrases near the top of each page.
Be sure that all of your images have relevant descriptions. Description tags are indexed and can greatly help you; Just remember that here, too, you want a balance - don’t spam your image tags with too many of the same basic key phrases and consider naming some images generically to improve the percentage and appear more “natural” and less “optimized.”
Make good use of header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.). More importance is given to these, so make sure your key words and phrases are in the headings. Also, it is best to use an outline format of nested heading tags and then paragraphs and lists. This is also the law in some European Countries to make the internet more friendly to the visually impaired who are using screen readers.
Linking
It is very important to get some incoming links from reputable websites that are addressing a similar audience. Avoid Link Farms and links from totally unrelated websites. The higher a sites Google “PR” the more it will help your rank. Contrary to popular belief, outgoing links do not cancel out incoming links; it is more of a plus one minus 1/2 type of deal. This means exchanging links can help, but they must be with reputable websites and the site with the lower “PR” is the one that benefits the most. In fact it really won’t benefit a site with a PR of 7 to trade with a site with a PR of 2, but the site with the 2 will benefit almost immediately. so, if you have a high PR, should you stop trading? NO! The sites you trade with may be valuable once they have been around a while and built up their own PR, plus you always want to associate with great sites whether they are recognized as such yet or not. Why not help out other sites you like and believe in - that is my philosophy.
Time
Yep, time is a factor. The longer your site is around (and known by the search indexes) the higher you will rank. It is possible for a site to go from a PR of 0, to a PR of 3 or 4 with only a couple of links after two or three years. I believe that the search engines see time as an indicator that the site has been well enough received by the public for you to justify the cost of renewing the name and your web hosting.
Google PR
I have mentioned Google PR a few times, so I should explain what PR is. Google PR is a score from one to 10 exponentially (like the Richter scale for earthquakes). It is based on many factors, but mostly the perceived quality of the page and who links to that page. Since it is exponential, getting from 0 to 1, or 1 to 2 is fairly easy, but getting from a 7 to an 8 is difficult and only a handful of sites earn a 10. Some examples: AOL’s home page is a 9; Yahoo is a 9; EBAY is an 8; TVGuide.com’s listings are a 6; MySpace is an 8; Business Networking International (BNI) is a 6; Most of the sites I have built are a 4 or 5; this site is brand new and has no incoming links (that will change soon & you could help:-)) so at this time it is still a zero.
If you have questions, get in touch with us and consider attending one of our Internet Marketing Workshops.
A few resources to help you with keywords:
- Word Tracker - www.wordtracker.com
- Trellian Keyword Discovery - www.keyworddiscovery.com
For search engine saturation and linking information:
- Market Leap - www.marketleap.com
