SEO Tips & Tricks

WHAT SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

Everyone wants to float higher in search results, so how do you accomplish this?  Having good meta data is one of the many pieces to successful SEO. This blog post will help us, help you reach your audience through searches.  In addition to using your meta data in the code, content, page titles, categories etc in your site, we will also submit your site to the searches.  We believe basic SEO is good web design and we support only white hat practices.

To understand what SEO really means, let’s break that sentence down and look at the parts:

  • Quality of traffic. You can attract all the visitors in the world, but if they’re coming to your site because Google tells them you’re a resource for Apple computers when really you’re a farmer selling apples, that is not quality traffic. Instead you want to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in products that you offer.
  • Quantity of traffic. Once you have the right people clicking through from those search engine results pages (SERPs), more traffic is better.
  • Organic results. Ads make up a significant portion of many SERPs. Organic traffic is any traffic that you don’t have to pay for.

Here are some ways to help keep your site floating up to the top:

  1. Review your site stats and see what people are using to find you: add these terms into your site content
  2. Content management: clear title, current meta descriptions, content with targeted keyword phrases, header tags, inter page linking with anchor text, image ALT tags (and filenames), individual tags for special content areas, use of correct headings (H1, H2, H3), sitemap
  3. Links have unique and descriptive names (avoid using “Click here”)
  4. Keep your site content fresh and current (update regularly)
  5. Link building: you link to other sites, ask other sites to link to you
  6. Search friendly urls (we do this for you!)
  7. Consider an AddThis account
  8. Consider an SSL Certificate if you don’t have one with your domain name/hosting
  9. Mobile friendly design (responsive)
  10. Do you have a blog?  With the drama happening on social media, some people are going back to RSS feeds to keep up to date on organizations.

NOTE: IF you want to remain at the top of search results, there are paid services you can employ.  This post is about free (organic) results.  

HOW SEO WORKS

Here’s how it works: Google (or any search engine you’re using) has a crawler that goes out and gathers information about all the content they can find on the Internet. The crawlers bring all those 1s and 0s back to the search engine to build an index. That index is then fed through an algorithm that tries to match all that data with your query.

There are a lot of factors that go into a search engine’s algorithm, and here’s how a group of experts ranked their importance:

 

 

 

 

Read more about the stats. And even more – beginner’s guide to SEO!

SEO REQUIREMENTS

Each search engine has different rules and guidelines for submitting your site. This is a general listing of items that will assist with the submission of your site to the top search engines. By establishing this info early in the game, we can include this in the coding of your site.  And you can use it as a content management guide!

COMPANY INFO

Some search engines ask for specific information regarding your site. Information such as your company’s start date, when your site launched and how many employees work for you (size of company) are all common questions.

  1. COMPANY START DATE
  2. SITE LAUNCH DATE
  3. COMPANY SIZE

TARGET MARKET

Some search engines ask you to list your TARGET MARKET, TARGET INDUSTRY and COMPETITION.

TARGET MARKET: These are the categories of people you want to attract as visitors to your site and ultimately as customers of your service or product.

TARGET INDUSTRY

These are the categories of businesses you want to attract as visitors to your site and ultimately as customers of your service or product.

COMPETITION

This is to see where your competitors are listed so that you can leverage your listings in those categories.

KEYWORDS

Some search engines index your site by cataloging KEYWORDS provided by website registration and/or embodied in the text or code of the site. Please list 30 keywords that describe your site and services. Number 1 is the most important and number 30 is the least common. Consider words that users might use when searching for your company through a search page like Yahoo, Bing or Google.

Ask yourself the following questions in creating your KEYWORDS:

  1. What are the various words you would use to describe your product/service?
  2. What is the name of your industry?
  3. What are the names of industries very similar to yours?
  4. What industries are people involved in that would serve as your customers?
  5. How would you define the type of person that would buy your product?
  6. What are the job titles of these people?
  7. What are other things in your market that these people would be interested in?

KEY PHRASES

These are a series of phrases that are brief combinations of two or more words that maximize the use of your KEYWORDS. Sometimes people searching the web use phrases in attempting to locate categories of web sites.

DESCRIPTIONS

Many search engines allow DESCRIPTIONS to be entered when submitting to them. Sometimes this is the brief blurb near your link in the results listing. Each search engine has different word requirements, so it is important to have a variety of lengths.

TITLE OF YOUR SITE

This is the title of your site that will be listed in the code as well as a listing description on some searches. Some search engines catalog the titles so by using KEYWORDS in your title your chances of appearing closer to the top are higher.

Titles should include:

  1. The actual name of your company and/or site.
  2. A starting word that is in the higher alphabet (A, B, C)
  3. As many KEYWORDS and KEY PHRASES as possible.

HEADLINES

Many searches, particularly the “Classified Ad” type of engine, permit a brief HEADLINE. A HEADLINE in your site registration is just like a Headline in a newspaper: a short, pithy statement about the subject matter designed to attract attention. Incorporating KEYWORDS into your HEADLINE is an efficient and successful way to place higher in search results.

CATEGORIES

Each search engine has a unique choice of CATEGORIES under which you may list your site – for example, Yahoo.

ADDITIONAL URLS

Some search engines allow you to register a second address. In addition to your home page, consider the second most important page of your site.

Some search engines may list you higher if you have a reciprocal link to them. This means you might consider having a links page on your site where you list out links (resources) for your visitors to follow.

NEXT STEPS:
Good SEO is like gardening.  You plant quality keywords and content.  Over time you weed the website based on your Google Analytics data.

  1. Complete an SEO worksheet
  2. Take another look at your content outline (navigation) – is it clear and easy to find information? (includes creating accessible URL’s)
  3. Keyword research: Review your current website content looking for prominence and density – are you using titles, subtitles, headlines?  Do you have keywords in your content? How do you links look?
  4. Do you have a Google Analytics account?  If yes, review your stats to pull popular keyword terms. If no, one will be set up with your new website.
  5. Are you an internet dead-end?  Make sure you have outbound links to relevant resources online.
  6. Create a list of websites you would like to link back to you – and then ask them.
  7. In 6 months, go through this list again!