There are different levels of search engine optimization that you can engage in from simply ensuring that your site is tagged properly to ongoing efforts reacting to changes ins search engine algorithms. We find that many people miss even the basics of SEO so we are briefly going to talk about some basic items that you can do to impact SEO.
On Page
Compliant Code
A site improperly coded will still be diplayed in and indexed by search engines (SE’s) so it appears that this might be better placed under the website step. But as search engines continue to tweak their algorithms we can foresee a time when compliant code impacts relevancy. For now reducing the amount of code on your page placed a higher priority on your content which should include keywords.Compliant code also makes your site easily spidered and allows you greater control over which portions of your content are given more weight by the search engines.
Optimized Tags
This includes your Title tags so SE’s know how the page is distinct from the others on your site, the description tag so SE’s know what the page is about, image alt tags incase you photo doesn’t display (plus if the image is linked the alt tag act like anchor text), heading tags to create a hierarchical structure for your content, and finally blog tags to help categorize your posts for indexing by SE’s.
Keyword Rich Content
Rich Keyword content helps you in two ways. First, it allows your website or blog post to convey information and content to the popular SE’s helping your content be indexed and linked to. Second, it provides clarity to readers interested in your site or blog topic. Just be sure not to overdo it or you will come off as spammy.
Frequently Updated Content
Frequently updated content can impact your SEO, but you need to ensure that the content offers value to your target market. In Google’s SEO Starter Guide it states “Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors listed in this guide”
A couple of the benefits are that over time Google will index your site more frequently, each new article or blog post adds a new page to be indexed by SE’d, and good content is shared driving new traffic which can affect Page Rank and search related traffic.
Site Map
Creating an XML Sitemap file for your site helps ensure that search engines discover the pages on your site.
Off Page
Inbound Links
One of the most important measures for your website is how many Inbound Links your site is getting. The number of inbound links acts as a scorecard for SE’s and the more you have the more likely your site is relevant. Just remember all inbound links are not equal.
Quality of Inbound Links
A single high-quality link can be far more valuable than dozens or even hundreds of low-quality links. Some factors that affect quality include the age of the domain linking in, the authority of the page linking in, and the anchor text used to link in. Reciprocal links are usually less valuable than one-sided links.
Relevance of Inbound Links
If your site or blog focuses on the automotive industry and you receive links from sites that focus on pets there is little relevance to the inbound links. SE spiders are known to scan the content of the backlinks before grading their category.
Domain Age
Older domains have a distinct advantage over new domains. There’s not much you can do but be patient and work on those factors you can control. If you do change your url just be sure to properly redirect your old url’s to your new site.
Page Rank
There are questions about whether Google Page has any SEO importance and I’ve yet to see a definitive answer. Still PageRank can be important to the extent that people often associate page rank site or page value, which means they are more likely to then do business with it.
Now that you’ve optimized your website and marketing you are ready to move on to Step 5: Building Your Online Communities