Getting started with SEO (search engine optimization)
If you are starting a new website or blog, the following SEO information may serve as a good reference point to get you off on the right foot toward getting your website indexed into some of the more popular search engines. Many sites dive much deeper into SEO, but this post is aimed at getting started and covers the beginning phases of optimizing your site for search.
Title Tag
The page title element is probably the most important factor for ranking highly in the search engines. Page title content is normally 3-9 words max in length and straight and to the point. This is what shows up in most search engine results as a link back to your website. Make sure your title is appropriate to the content on the page. Example - <title>Page title goes here</title>
META Site Description Tag
The META description tag usually consists of 25 to 30 words or less using no more than 160 to 180 characters total. The META description normally shows up below your title information in most search engine results. Again, be sure that your description content is relevant to your site content. Example - <meta name=”description” content=”website description goes here”> In red below shows the title tag and META description results in google.
Heading Tags
Put keywords and phrases in heading tags. Search engines deem these tags more significant that most other html tags. It also helps if these tags appear toward the top of your page. Relevant content in your heading tags makes the search engine robots and spiders happy. An <h1> tag is used for the title of this post and an <h2> tag is used for the red header section hrases.
Alt Attribute
Alt text is the line of text you would see if images are disabled or broken and do not show up on your site. This technique is highly recommended and is required by accessibility laws and also indexed by search engines. It is not recommended to use keywords in Alt text, but to use text that describes the image that is displayed by the browser. Example - <img src=”image.jpg” mce_src=”image.jpg” alt=”alt text goes here”>
Hyperlinked Text
One area that is important and under utilized are text links. Be sure to use relevant text link content. Stay away from linking things like “click here” and “go here”. Use explicit text for your links so they can be indexed by search engines. One thing to note – while image links can look nice, search engines have no idea how to index them. Do not use - <a href=”link.html” mce_href=”link.html”>click here</a> to go to your shopping cart Instead use - <a href=”link.html>shopping cart</a>
Visible Site Content
Your site content is also extremely important. You’ve probably heard the expression “Content is King” and it really is. If I’m doing internet searches it’s for one thing…INFORMATION. Be sure your site has relevant content that follows good practices. For example, do not put white text keywords/phrases on a white background so they are invisible to the human eye. This type of practice can get you banned. Be sure that your content is relative for your users or viewers. Site content is very significant and is one of the main areas of SEO and SEM. Try to engage the user while using keyword and phrases. Change up your content and use tracking information. Analyze your tracking information to see what is working for your website. It takes time to nail down your content with keywords and phrases. The best way to find out what’s working is to try different approaches.
Newer approaches to SEO
A blog is one of the best ways to get good and quick results without much time/effort vested in the project. Blogs can easily be updated by almost anyone with new and fresh content that will bring spiders and robots back to your site more often for better site placement. I recommend using wordpress because it’s free and there is a large community of support for plug-ins. The hard part has been done…just plug it in and start blogging.
Flickr is a great place to upload images and tag them with keywords. This will allow users to easily find your photos via search engines and lead them back to your site. Upload your videos to YouTube and tag them.
YouTube allows you to play the videos directly from your website and, like Flickr, they will do all the SEO for you.
There are various other social networking sites that can help in the same way that flickr and youtube will. Below are just a few; do an internet search on social networking and you will find many sites that you can use as tools for your SEO adventures.
• Twitter
• Digg
• Delicious
• Stumbleupon
• Wikipedia
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