How does your site do with the basics of SEO? What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s the process of taking a page on a website, and optimizing it’s content to help it appear for specific searches in a search engine. Every search engine is a little different, using a different algorithm, but the basics of SEO are the same. These are very basic, there’s volumes to learn on this topic, but here are a few things you can easily change.
Take a look at a page on your site. At the top of your browser, there’s some text in the title bar. This is your Title tag. What’s it say? If it says something like “Welcome to Company X’s Website” then it’s not exactly optimized. Why is the Title tag so important? It’s what people will see in the search engine results. It also figures into what pages are ranked for which searches.
So you want to take advantage of that bit of real estate. Let’s compare “Welcome to Company X’s Website” with a better version. “Blue Widget, Widget Parts, Company Name” This is descriptive, contains keywords and if you’re searching for Blue Widgets, will likely get the click. You still have your company name for branding too. In some markets, it also makes sense to include local information – like your city and/or state, depending on the market you serve. This title should be different and specific to each page.
Another item that is often forgotten. Meta-tags. They aren’t the end all, be all they once were, but they’re still an important part of a well formed page. Include them, including the keyword and description tag on each page. These too should be tailored to each page. Don’t overstuff you keywords into these tags, repetitive stuffing doesn’t help anyone. [http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/avoid-keyword-stuffing/]
Next let’s see if your page includes any Hx tags. These are Heading tags. They are part of html markup that help break up the document content that is on your page. They range from H1 through H6. H1 is seen as the most important. This is a good place for descriptive keywords and another place to avoid the dreaded “welcome to my site” text. Instead, use this area to tell what the page is about. Think of these as sections in an outline. It’s a logical way to present copy on a page.
Look at this example. The bolded lines are examples of heading use. These are locations where you can use keywords to your advantage.
Finally, you want to link to other pages of your site, from within the text of your own pages and especially within the body copy. Use keywords in your copy for this. It’s simple, but overlooked so often.
Tell the search engines more about what your page is about by using these techniques. How’d your site do? Need some help?