Basic SEO Tips
On page optimization is one of the most important things you can do to
increase the organic ranking of your website in the Google search engine
results page, also know as "SERP's". Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
has become a useful marketing tool, that it has spawned an industry of
profitable companies dedicated to Search Engine Marketing.
Since SEO is such a resourceful way to gain exposure and branding on
your website, why not learn how to do it for your own website or blog?
Using simple tricks of the trade, also known as the best practices of
SEO, you can adjust your search engine position by a decent amount, and
get extra traffic on long-tail keywords, in your blog posts. I'm going
to review some of the most effective, simple, and oldest best practices
of SEO tricks to you, so pay attention!
Title Tag Optimization
Your title tag, as seen at the top of your internet explorer, firefox,
opera, or chrome (PS - Don't use internet explorer!), is a solid way of
proving to your potential visitor that your site is what they want to
see when they perform a search. A title tag shown in the search engine
results are the most obvious thing there - usually identical to what is
on the top of the browser.
To access or change your title tag in dreamweaver or basic html, look
for the !
If you are using a content management system like Drupal or Wordpress,
then your title tag is defined either by CleanURLS (Drupal) or
Permalinks (Wordpress). To access Permalinks in wordpress, simply look
at your tools tab and click "permalinks". Then you will be given some
options of how to form your posts, the most commonly seen ones (and
most SEO friendly) are %category%/%postname%.
Meta Keyword Optimization
Now a day, meta tags are really not the single most important SEO
strategy. Back in the day, you were able to cram as many keywords into
the meta keyword tag as you wanted, to rank for basically every one of
those keywords! Now, it is best practice to optimize each individual
page for one specific keyword. If you run a balloon site, for example,
you would want "balloons" for your home page, "red balloons" for a page
about red balloons, and "inflatable balloons" for it's own page.
Meta Description Optimization
I take this more seriously than the meta keyword tag, simply because
this is what Google reads and displays in the SERPs. Having a well
written meta description can increase your click through rate. It is
ideal to place the keyword in the meta description twice, for extra
boldness. If you don't know what I mean by boldness - just do a search
for "balloon" and you'll notice any instance of "balloon" is bolded.
Including the Title tag, meta description, and, our next point - URL.
URL Naming Conventions
Not talking about a gathering of nerds, obsessing over URL names. Not
one bit. I'm talking about how your URL's are structured. They should
include the keyword of your niche, ie - a balloon website like
"balloonworld.com" will do much better for the term "balloon" than
"blowupthings.com" simply because the keyword is stuck right in there!
A great strategy that works. See the Title Tag reference for wordpress
use (blog post names are excellent for long tail keywords).
Content
Some will argue that content is king - I completely agree, but it isn't
royalty without any backlinks to it. An SEO friendly article will have
at minimum, 500 words, with a keyword density of 5%. Use your keyword
25 times if you have a 500 word article. Pretty simple stuff! Spread it
out, use the "strong" tag on one of the keywords as well. No idea
why this seems to help, but it also gives it importance, as read by a
human.
Of course, nobody likes simple, plain content. People love to see
images too! Luckily there's an optimization tip for that as well.
Image Alt Tags
A seperate SEO for images! Google Image Search indexes by alt tags and
descriptions, but the amount of traffic that comes from images is very
very slim. People just want to steal pictures from your site, so that's
why we optimize them! Hehe.
Avoid using Flash
Having a flash site, at this point in time, is like having a blank
piece of paper. Google is working on their indexing of flash, but it is
virtually useless at this point in time. Besides, there are way more
advanced ways of building a flashy looking site than using actual
Flash. Look into Ajax and Javascript, which are both fully indexable,
and SEO Friendly.
Get Backlinks
There are many places you can get backlinks to your site - take Info
Barrel for example. They allow users to write articles, gain revenue
off of their own adsense accounts, and drop solid backlinks with custom
anchor text.
There are also other sites that allow 'dofollow' backlinks too, like
Blogger, associated content, squidoo, etc. So you better be ready to
write for backlinks!
If you are having troubles with your own site, there are people that
can help you! I do Search Engine Optimization for a living, and I also
run a Viral Marketing Blog that give you tips on Twitter, Digg, Mixx,
Stumbleupon, and many more social networking sites.
If you have an inquiry about getting Search Engine Optimization on your
site, check out Victoria SEO. We'll get you set up in no time, and
hitting the Search Engines fast, with great results.
I also run an SEO Drupal site, dedicated to helping the Drupal
community with SEO
- from on page tips, to using proper modules and URL
naming conventions.
So, that being said, hopefully you can achieve some good traffic with
your website or blog! You can also comment on this article below, and I
will get an email, and hopefully answer your questions!
Thanks for reading, and good luck!