Learning how to do SEO (search engine optimization) may seem like you are learning a foreign language at first, but with some basic understanding about what SEO is and how to implement it – it shouldn’t be too hard. In the first part of this article we will answer the question what is SEO and then give some free SEO tips to help any webmaster or web designer implement effective SEO techniques on a website.
What is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, is an ongoing process of optimizing a website so that it will rank higher in search engine results for specific keywords. In a nutshell, when someone searches for the keywords you are targeting, you want them to see your website listed on the first page of search engine results. For example, if you go to google.com and search for blue widgets you will see that there are some 74 million results. For anyone to find your website when searching for ‘blue widgets’, your site has to be on the first page of those results, most people will not look past the first page before changing the keywords they search for. SEO is all about telling the search engines what your website is about and what words people should be searching to find it. That said, let’s get right into the SEO tips that will teach you how to do SEO effectively.
How to do SEO effectively
Tip #1 Start your SEO before you build your website. This may seem counterintuitive, how do you optimize a website before it is created? SEO starts with knowing what keywords people will use when searching for your website. Once you pick a main keyword, or group of keywords (typically no more than 2 to 3 words), you will want to use the keyword in your domain name. Your domain name will be part of the URL for every page on your site so it is critical that it contain the keywords you are optimizing the site for. You may not be able to get the exact domain for your keywords but using some variation that includes the keywords will help a lot in your search engine optimization efforts. Don’t just guess what keywords people will use. Picking the right keywords is the single most important part of SEO and people finding your website. Do some research. Talk to people about what they would search to find your business, do some searches for words you think people would use and see what kind of results come up, use free tools like Google AdWords to get an idea of how many people are searching for key terms, and then pick the words to use. You will want to use words that get a lot of search but that you can be competitive for.
Tip #2 Use keywords effectively. Bad SEO tactics include keyword stuffing or hidden keywords. If you have very little content on your site and every sentence has your keywords 3-4 times, it is overkill! To use your keywords effectively make sure the keywords are in the title page (you may be using different keywords for different pages so make sure to customize the title for each page to include the applicable keyword(s). Use keywords in file names – this can include images, text, video, or any other type of file. Use keywords in your anchor text of your links. When linking your homepage to an inside page use descriptive keywords that tell the website visitor, and the search engines, what content they can expect to find when they click the link. Use keywords in meta tags, meta descriptions, etc. but don’t overdo it. Meta text can help search engines know what your site is offering but stuffing keywords in there will just make your site look like SPAM.
Tip #3 Keywords in content, outside links, and social media. Fresh, unique content is key. If 50 other websites offer the same thing you do and they all describe the offerings in the exact same wording, search engines won’t have much to go off to determine which site really has the best information. Keep in mind, no human is actually looking at every website and determining where to place them in search results. Search engine ranking is based off complicated algorithms that are constantly changing – as such; you must constantly be adapting and adjusting your site accordingly. Back to content, if you sale the same thing as 50 other sites but you offer unique, detailed descriptions that are rich in keywords the search engines will take notice and see you as an authority or expert on the topic, generally resulting in higher search engine rankings. Outside links, links from other websites back to yours, using anchor text with your keywords are very helpful. Don’t buy links. Buying links can get you banned from search engines altogether. Use social media to communicate with your customers and potential clients. These conversations and links are used by search engine as a cue about how many people are talking about your website.
Tip #4 Stay committed and be patient. As we mentioned before, SEO is not a one time deal. Search engines are constantly trying to improve the way they rank websites and find ways to stop spam sites. What this means for you is that you need to have some type of website analytics that will give you information about what keywords your visitors are using to find your site, which search engines, social media pages, or other websites are referring traffic to your site, and which pages on your site are being visited most frequently. All of this information can be helpful when learning how to do SEO. Keep in mind that not every site on the internet is “crawled”, or evaluated, every day by every search engine. It may take a few days, especially for a new site, to show up in search engine results at all and can take several months for a site to climb higher in search engine placement. Use the information from your analytics, check out other high ranking sites to see what they are doing different, and make tweaks to your SEO techniques when needed. Changing one thing at a time and then waiting a couple of weeks to see how your traffic and ranking are affected can help you determine which SEO techniques are the most effective for your website.
There is a lot of information available about how to do SEO. Just make sure that the information you are getting comes from a reliable source that will keep your site off black lists and keep them from getting banned. Once your site has been banned for spam it can take months or years to clean it up and get it resubmitted. If you are purchasing a domain that was previously in use, be sure and check with the major search engines to make sure it is not a banned domain. If you are purchasing it as a new owner and will be completely reworking or building a new site, the search engines have re inclusion request forms you can fill out to give you a clean slate and allow your new site to be included in search engine results.