Some basic search engine optimization
tips can help your website push higher on the page rankings.
Yes, you may think you know basic SEO, but we all need reminders
of how important it is to our business success. There may be some
wonderful tips you have forgotten or you may not have ever learned.
Like using the page numbers on web pages. It surprises me that
some websites still use the page number instead of name, yet it
still happens.
And while busy doing all the SEO work on the
website, it becomes real easy to forget that search engines rank
the pages individually as well. These little things may not be
much by themselves, but together they add up to results that can
really help your search engine ranking.
All these pieces come together like a puzzle
to create your search engine ranking and create a site that helps
visitors know you have what they want. When you combine a good
ranking with multiple pages that offer visitor-related materials,
you will have a much greater chance of converting them to consumers.
The Strongest SEO Elements:
Domain Name: Include keywords,
if possible. Don't OVER HYPHENATE
Title Tag: The tag should be targeted AND clickable
Back Links
Also Consider these SEO Basics
Pages Names: Named according to
the page content
Meta Description: What people see on the Search
Engine Results and can get you better click-through
Meta Keywords: While some Search engines don't
use these, you can use for tracking purposes
SEO Basic Factors
While you may think SEO is important for your
website, ranking is important for each individual page. Each page
has its own rank in the search engines, the whole website is only
a part of the factor.
Based on experience the three strongest elements to a page are
its Domain Name, Title Tag and Back Links, and
depending on the level of competition for your search phrase,
an adjustment to any of these can increase your page anywhere
from few up to hundreds of spots.
There are some other elements as well, that I will also cover
in this article.
Domain Name
Include keywords, if possible; however, don’t make it “spammy”
with too much hyphenation! My personal rule of thumb is no more
than 2 hyphens. If your niche is wedding favors, and all the “good”
domain names are taken, you could consider beautiful-wedding-favors.com,
but I wouldn’t recommend the-very-best-wedding-favors-ever.com.
Get the picture?
The Title Tag
I think of it like the mullet hairstyle: business in the front,
party in the back. Your most important keywords should be in the
front, and it should be followed with a compelling reason to click
the link:
Beautiful Wedding Favors: We ship your Wedding Favors for Free
Beach Wedding Favors: Free Shipping on all Beach Theme Favors
You don’t have to “stuff” the title tag, and
in the search results it is the most prominent, clickable element.
You want to design it to help you rank higher AND get more clicks
than the other folks.
Back Links
It has been said that enough back links can solve any ranking
problem, and that’s probably true, but you do want to make
them work well for you. Remember, anchor text matters! Your best
links will include keyword rich words and phrases, not your URL.
For example:
Buy beautiful beach wedding favors from my-great-sites.com
…is MUCH better than…
Buy beautiful beach wedding favors from my-great-sites.com.
Hint: Your links should look NATURAL. In other words, they shouldn’t
all say exactly the same thing. Immediately having 10,000 back
links to a site that’s been online 2 days, with all the
same exact links just doesn’t “feel” right.
ALSO … Remember that you want to get links DEEP into your
site, not just the home page. It has been suggested in the past
that no more than 50% of your links should point to the home page,
so be sure to get links to categories and even product level pages
(if you’re in eCommerce)!
The next element that I work diligently on to make keyword rich
is the actual page name. Consider the keywords that are targeted
for the page, and name the pages accordingly – even in eCommerce
and database driven sites.
Page Names
Do you have a generic domain, or a custom domain? (www.mydomain.com/seo-expert-tips.html
vs. www.mydomain.com/?3z42.php)
Your pages should be themed based on relevance. If the page is
about beach wedding favors, keep the content relevant. Don’t
stray and add extra content about wedding shoes and the dress
– unless it’s appropriate.
Meta Description
The Meta Description should NOT be ignored. While it will not
affect the search results, it can alter the results of the search
and drive a higher click through rate. This is the second feature
anyone will notice about your site, BEFORE they ever arrive on
the page. So use keyword rich content with compelling text to
encourage them to click on that search engine listing to visit
your site. I have seen occasions on our own site where we were
getting higher click throughs at #2 than the listing at #1, and
our only conclusion is that our meta description copy was more
compelling to the user.
Meta Keywords
Meta Keywords are certainly not generally used for ranking, but
I add them to each page so that I can keep track of what the page
theme is ranking for. Some folks are concerned that using them
this way would allow others to “steal” your keywords,
but frankly there are so many other tools out there that they
don’t have to view my meta keywords to find out what I am
trying to rank that page for.
These are just the basics that can help your page rank better.
There are additional factors that you may want to add depending
on your site.
