Search engine optimization, or SEO, can be one of the most important aspects to consider when building your website. Millions of internet users rely on organic search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN to find what they’re looking for. By applying smart SEO principles to your site, you can keep yourself in front of your prospective customers.
Best Practices SEO
The basic premise of SEO is to make specific pages of your website rank well in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN for keyword phrases that are relevant to your site.
For sake of simplicity, this article will assume that you have a modicum of HTML knowledge already. The information we are sharing here is generally well known and understood among SEO circles. We are not giving out secrets to our own ranking success, as SEO is a large component of our own marketing plan. This is simply a basic overview for those with little to no SEO knowledge. Unlike other tomes, however, this article is fact-filled, and does not contain mis-information designed to sabotage your efforts.
Keywords
Keyword research is extremely important for success in SEO. Use a tool like Wordtracker, Google Adwords: Keyword Tool, or the KeywordDiscovery.com Keyword Research Tool to find out what keywords people are searching on. It’s best to optimize your site for keywords that get significant searches but have little competition, until you become very confident in your SEO abilities. If Google shows more than 1-2 million results for your search query, it’s going to take a concerted effort to rank in the top 10 for that keyword phrase. It’s also wise to focus on 2-4 word phrases rather than singular words. This is how most people search anyway, plus there’s likely to be less competition for lengthier phrases, and the traffic will be much more targetted.
Once you’ve chosen your keywords, they must be worked into the various pages of your site in the manner discussed below. You should also research some synonyms to use as keywords.
Meta Data
There are three primary components of the head tag that should be addressed in order to optimize a page of your site for SEO: the title tag, the description tag, and the keywords tag. The title tag is the most important of the three. It should be around 6 words long, give or take a few words. Include your primary keywords (for the page) in the title tag. It should look like this:
<title>Keywords in Your Title Tag Help You Rank</title>
The description tag should be around 12-24 words give or take. It should contain all the keywords used in your title tag, plus derivatives such as singular or plural, in a sentence structure. The description tag should occur immediately after the <title> tag, and look like this:
<meta content=”Use your keywords in a sentence structure.”>
The keywords tag is ignored by some search engines like Google, but others still use it. It doesn’t hurt to use it, so you may as well use it properly. It can have 24-48 words, but less is okay too. Place your keywords, singular and plural forms, synonyms, and misspellings within the keywords tag. You can separate them with a space or with a comma – it really doesn’t matter. It looks like this:
<meta content=”keyword keywords keywird keywurd key word”>
On-Page Copy
Your chosen keywords must also appear within the visible copy on the page. Don’t overdo it though. If you use the exact keyword phrases too many times it will sound funny to the reader and will come off as “spammy.” Put your primary keyword phrase in an <h1> or <h2> tag. Never use more than one <h1> on a page. If you have an <h1> tag on the page you may also use one or more <h2> tags. They should all contain similar word themes, not vastly divergent themes. The text on your page should help to establish the theme of what your site is about.
A good rule of thumb is to shoot for around 2-5% density for each keyword. Tools such as The Analyzer will assist you in determining what your kw density is.
Links
It is important to get links to your site from other related sites. Submitting your site to directories is a good way to begin establishing your link popularity. Search for “keyword directory” in a good search engine, substituting keyword with a word that is relevant to your site. More general directories often have categories for your site content as well.
Next, seek out link partners – sites that are related to your category – and request a link from them. It often helps if you first link to them, as they are more likely to link back to you that way. Try to get them to use text links that contain your keyword when linking to your site.
Don’t waste time exchanging links with a gambling site if your site’s theme is furniture. Any such link would be irrelevant and will not help your rankings. Also, ignore Google PR values and focus instead on the relevance of the site to your own.
The more relevant, high quality links you can establish to your site, the more frequently your site will be spidered, and the better your site will rank for your chosen keywords. It may take time to achieve those high rankings (especially in Google), but in the long run good SEO techniques will pay off.
There is alot more to SEO than what has been outlined here. Without sharing any little-known secrets to ranking success, we have given you the basic tools to rise above many of your competitors. It’s up to you to perform research and find out what it takes to dominate in the search engines.
