1. Quality Content
When we first started looking at SEO as a separate entity to website build there was one phrase that we would continually hear, content is King, and its true. There is nothing more valuable you can do to optimize your site for search engines than offer unique well written content. A search engines aim is to serve up what it believes to be the most appropriate website for any given search to the end user.
Why Quality Content Sucks The problem with the idea of build quality content is that nobody reads it until AFTER you have established a reputation for yourself.
Imagine we are the end user and we are searching for a portable air conditioner for hire. We go to our favorite search engine and search for the phrase portable air conditioner hire. In this imaginary scenario lets assume there are only 2 websites that target that phrase,Website 1Website 1 consists of a single page with 3 paragraphs of text. The text tells us that the company does portable air conditioning hire and gives us a phone number to call.Website 2Website 2 contains 30 plus pages all focusing on various portable air conditioning units that we can hire, costs and technical explanations of how portable air conditioning units work.Which website do you think the search engine is likely to offer to the user first? Its a rather obvious example but it illustrates the importance of good content so your priority should be good quality content.2. Use Structural (Semantic) Mark Up and Separate Content from Presentation
Semantically structuring your mark up helps search engines understand the content of your web page which is of course a good thing. Making proper use of heading elements is essential because search engines give more weightto the content within the heading elements.
Separate Content and Presentation
When information is displayed on a printed page, its content and presentation are inextricably bound. The expression of the information is tied to its visual design, and the reader must be able to access and interpret the information as presented. When access is subject to requirements such as 20/20 vision, the information is bound to be inaccessible to some readers.
Using CSS to separate the design elements from the content makes for much leaner code and makes it easier for search engines to find what theyre looking for, which is content. Remember content is king!3. Titles and Meta Data
Providing pages with proper titles and meta data is essential. As discussed in the top 5 black hat SEO techniques section the meta description and meta keywords elements have been so misused in the past that Search
Engines now regard them as less important, its still important to use them and use them properly. Titles however still carry a lot of weight and when we think of semantic mark up it is obvious why. The title of anything is a declaration as to what the content might be, so make sure your page titles are a true representation of the content of the page.
Meta data is just data that quickly describes what is on a particular web page. This meta data can describe a number of things on your site, but for the purposes of this article, lets focus on three tags found within the head of every web page: , , and The title of the page.
What each tag does is pretty self explanitory. Good Search Engine Optimization practice tell us that:
= You would write about 20 keywords that best describes your web page.
= You would write a small paragraph describing your sites content using multiple keywords distinct to your site.
The title of the page = You would write a short title that might be the blog name and a less than one sentence description.
If you have small amounts of traffic, and you have not done what Ive subscribed above, then you will double your traffic pretty quickly once youve done this.
4.Keyword Research and Effective Keyword Use
Create your website with keywords and key phrases in mind. Research keywords and key phrases you think people might use to find your site. Single words are not always the most effective target, try multi-word phrases that are much more specific to your product/service and youll be targeting end users that are much more likely to want what you are offering.
Keyword research is the foundation of all Internet marketing. It is the lynch pin, if you will, off all your online efforts. Done right, it can help ensure a prosperous future for you and your company, with lots of target prospects, a growing client list and no limit for the future.
Use the keywords and key phrases youve identified effectively throughout your website. Assign each page 2-3 of the keywords youve identified and use the keywords throughout all the important elements of the page. Those are,TitleMeta DescriptionMeta KeywordsHeading Elements TextAlt TagTitle TagLinks5. Quality Inbound Links
The amount of quality inbound links to your site is one of the most important criteria used by search engines to rank your pages. Therefore, a well conducted link exchange campaign is one of the most effective Internet marketing strategies you can follow.
Remember that to search engines not all links are created equal: some links are more important and will have more value than others. The best links are those from high quality, highly ranked pages with a topic related to your site.
Having inbound links to your website can be likened to having a vote for the good but there are good links and bad links so therefore votes for the good and votes that are bad. Good links are links from other web pagesthat are regarded highly by the search engines and are contextually relevant to the content of your page. Bad links are links from web pages that arent regarded highly or potentially banned by search engines and have no relevance to the content of your page.
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