Search Engine Optimization Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated
Do you feel search engines
are beyond your comprehension?
Do your eyes glaze over
when you hear about algorithms and Google dances?
Good
news! You don’t need to know these things to receive a steady
stream of search engine traffic. If you have a quality,
well-written site with descriptive information, you can’t help
but do well on the search engines.
To help you along,
here’s a checklist to make sure that your site is ready for
the search engines:
1. Did you name your file
appropriately to fit the page’s content? For example, if your
particular page is about a baby teething remedy, make a
descriptive name for your file. For example:
parent-site.com/baby-teething-remedy.html (separate your words
with a hyphen).
Please note: The effects of doing this
may be very small when it comes to search engine placement,
but it is certainly worth including on your
checklist.
2. Do you have descriptive title tags on all
your pages? Title your page that has information about
teething remedies “Baby Teething Remedy”. Don’t call it
“Parent-Site.com” because that’s the name of your website.
That’s not descriptive.
Your title tags go in the head
of your html document and look like this:
3. Do you
have descriptive description tags on all your pages? Make sure
your title tag really describes what your page is all
about.
Your title tags go in the head of your html
document and look like this:
4. Have you included all those
descriptive words in your keyword meta tags? Keyword meta tags
have declined in their importance for search engines, but it
only takes a moment to add a few in. Make sure that the meta
keywords you use appear in the content of your page
too.
Your keywords go in the head of your html document
and look like this:
Please note: You may target more than
just one “keyword” phrase (in this case, “baby teething
remedy”) in each page, but for the sake of simplicity, these
examples will only cover one phrase.
5. Have you
written informative content based on your title and
description? Again, if your page is about baby teething
remedies, you will use the words baby + teething + remedy
throughout your content, right? Good writing demands that you
say what you are talking about, so I hope you have this
covered!
6. Do you use informative headlines throughout
your document? These headlines will help your visitors scan
the document for useful information and may help search
engines determine how relevant your content is.
Your
headlines go in the body of your HTML document and look like
this:
Baby Teething Remedy(with the number in the tags
corresponding with size of the font)
7. Have you
included ALT tags on your graphics? ALT tags are the
descriptive text attached to graphics. It’s the text that
appears when Internet Explorer users put their mouse over the
graphic. It’s also the text that appears if you graphic hasn’t
been uploaded to the server or a visitor has graphics turned
off on her browser.
For more information on how and
why to use ALT tags, go to
http://www.internetbasedmoms.com/alt_tags.htm
8. Is
your website easy to navigate for your visitors? Can they find
each major section of your website from every page? Do you
have a Site Map where visitors can go to learn about the
various areas of your website? If your visitors can find their
way around, search engine spiders should be able to as
well.
9. Do you have quality links coming into your
website? There’s no need to go bonkers over exchanging links,
but do build quality links that include the keywords that you
are targeting on that particular page.
For example: If
your website is about parenting babies, make sure your link
text includes a keyword phrase like “Baby Parenting Advice”.
The keywords should be in the actual hyperlink, not in the
description.
Again, building links goes back to the
quality of your website. The higher quality your content, the
more likely people will want to link to you. For more tips on
building incoming links, visit
http://www.internetbasedmoms.com/articles2/link_popularity.html
But don’t sweat over this one. Building descriptive and
informative content will serve you much better than exchanging
links with a thousand websites.
10. If you need help
finding the right keyword phrases in your various pages, try
an excellent keyword tool like Word Tracker ~
http://our.affiliatetracking.net/wordtracker/af.cgi?6484. This
tool will help you determine which keywords are being entered
into search engines and which potentially have the least
amount of competition.
And that’s it! It really can be
that simple. Being descriptive and having great content goes a
long way for securing top search engine rankings.
About the Author Alice Seba is the editor of
http://www.internetbasedmoms.com and author of An Internet
Based Mom's Guide to Marketing Your Website ~
http://www.wahm-internet-marketing-guide.com ~ an essential
guide for any mom with a cyber
business.
Author
Website: http://www.internetbasedmoms.com
|