Search Engine Optimization

There is an attitude that Search Engine Optimization has to be a horrid complex thing that is too

technical for real people to attempt. This isn't actually true, and as long as you understand what it really

is, you can do the most important things without any particular skills other than the ability to think like

your site visitors.

The first goal with any site is good content. With Search Engines, WRITTEN content has a higher value

than images or sounds, or other digital elements which search engines cannot interpret. Words, they can

almost make sense of. Everything else is just digital noise.

The first rule of SEO, is:

Build your site for PEOPLE first. If you write good text, and create a good site that people can

understand and appreciate, then search engines are more likely to like it too.

When you make pages better for search engines, or people, this is called “optimizing” the pages or the site.

Optimizing just means making it work better.

What search engines like, is “relevant” content.

That means, when someone does a net search, they want to

be able to give the searcher something that fits what they are looking for. So search engine companies have

developed complex programming routines to judge, by words, placements, and emphases on your pages, what

is relevant, and what is not. These routines are referred to as “algorithms” by techies, which is just a confusing

way of saying that the formulas use are mathematical in nature.

Now, PEOPLE want relevant content too. And your goal is to satisfy people.

So when you understand that

the goal of Search Engines is NOT to trick you into losing traffic, or to require you to do highly complex things in

order to compete, but that THEIR goal and YOUR goal is the same (to bring people to your site who are

LOOKING for stuff on your site), then you can make sure your SEO efforts are rooted in ACCURACY, not tricks.

When you do that, everybody wins, you most of all, because accuracy is precisely the goal of search engine

companies.

Optimizing your pages will help you to get more free traffic, and those visitors will be more interested in

what you have on your site.

So, what do you DO to optimize your site?

1. Good site structure helps pages be found easily.

2. Good page focus helps search engines index interior pages more accurately.

3. Well written and well worded content helps search engines (and people) know what your pages

are really about.

4.

A good title tag (a piece of code that creates the title that displays in the title bar of your browser

window) helps to emphasize the most important topics on the page.

At first, if you have the same

title tag through each page in your site, that will be better than none, but later (when you have time to go

through the site page by page), you'll want to give each page a unique title tag.

5.

Good Keyword and Description metatags (more code bits) help to reinforce what the key words

and topics are on the page.

You can use the same shortcut to begin with as you do with a title tag –

use the same keyword and description tags on every page. Later, it helps to make them more targeted

to each page.

6.

Alt tags on the images (still more code) help the search engines to know what images are about

when the images are an important part of the message of the site

, plus they help people to know

what the image means if it does not load correctly (or if they have visual problems).

7. Carefully thought out keyword and keyphrase usage in your title tag, description metatag, alt

tags, and page text headings, as well as on your links, and the first text paragraphs in your page,

can help to reinforce the message to people and search engines.

What do you NOT want to do when you optimize a site?

 

1.

Do NOT overuse keywords!

Use them in a natural way, and do not repeat them excessively.

2.

Do not repeat keywords in title tags

unless it is natural to do so.

3.

Keep your keyword metatag list down to 20 keywords or less

– stick to the important stuff.

4.

Do not make your title tag too long

– 5-10 words at most, SHORTER is better.

5.

Do not make alt tags too long

– same rule as title tag.

6.

Do not use hidden links or hidden text on your page

(invisible images, or text that is the same color

as your page).

7.

Do not use any tactic that aims to trick search engines

into giving you more traffic.

8.

Do not worry and fuss about technical issues.

Seriously. Search engines do not penalize you for

being technically unskilled, so if you do not use mod rewrite on a php driven site, they are not going to

penalize you for not knowing what the heck mod rewrite is or what to do with it.

You may hear a lot more complex stuff about SEO. Don't worry about the time consuming and highly

complex stuff. You see, search engine optimization has two facets that many people do not understand:

1.

The most effective things that are going to make the biggest difference are the simple, logical

things that almost anyone can do, if they can write well.

Truly! The other things are things that are

pretty complex, and only make the tiniest percentage of difference. Fine if you are a huge corporation

with massive resources, but impractical for a small company (the breakpoints for corporations are

different than the breakpoints for small businesses or shoestring startups).

2.

No one is really an expert.

Search engine companies keep some rules hidden on purpose, to keep

unscrupulous people from manipulating the engines. And many SEO firms will never test some

strategies in an objective way, because to do so would risk hurting the ratings. Lastly, sites are so

different, and so many things can affect traffic, that it is almost impossible to isolate a single tactic as

having been the one that did the damage. So when you focus on ACCURATE presentation of

information, you won't go wrong, because you and the search engines have the same goal.

Do the stuff that matters most, and then move on to more important things.

Search engine optimization is

only part of the equation for getting good traffic, so do what is logical, and then focus on marketing strategies

that will get you more traffic than fussing over little things that won't matter much.

Good basic SEO can make a difference in how much traffic you get, and is worth doing right.

But beyond

the basics, you do not need to worry until you know you can afford $20,000 to have an SEO specialization firm

go through your site and focus on tiny tweaks that may give you just a small increase in traffic or profit

percentages.