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| Search Engine Optimization- What You Need to Knowby Steve Lionais |
Every good SEO strategy should involve a number of key components:
1. Keyword Research
2.Optimizing Page Content
3.Optimizing Page Metadata
4.Creating internal links
5. Building external links
Keyword Research
First, you need to understand how visitors locate your site. If you’re not sure how to do this, Stephanie Lummis has already written a great article on how to analyze your keyword traffic. You should then consider how potential customers describe your product or service in the ‘real world.’ You’ll likely find that your customers refer to your product or service differently than you do among your colleagues. For example, a hotel owner may think customers are looking to book ‘hotel accommodations’ when really they are searching for ‘hotel rooms’ four times as often. Conduct your keyword research using these tools:
Optimizing Page ContentNow that you’ve chosen the keywords you want to target, you must now decide on a page that best suits these keywords. *Remember, this is not always the Home Page. You want to edit and tweak the copy on this page to include your keyword phrase. Consider including your keyword phrases in the copy of your content three or more times depending on the length of the page and amount of text on it. It’s also important to use your keywords early on in the page’s content, particularly in the Page Heading (found in the tag in the page code, and bolded text).
A note of caution here- The more keywords on your pages DOES NOT equal higher search rank. This is often referred to as keyword density; it plays much less of a role in search rankings than it used to. Think about the user experience first, and search engines second. Littering your text with keywords will reduce readability and user satisfaction without improving your search rankings.
Optimizing Metadata Each page of your website contains metadata that helps search engines identify and understand what the content of your page is about. Metadata includes the Page Title, Meta Description, and Meta Keywords. Often this information is left blank or populated without thought of keywords when your site is built. The Page Title typically appears on the top of your browser window, the meta description is often used by search engines to display a snippet of text (up to 162 characters including spaces for Google) in the search results pages, and the meta keywords are a list of keywords that describe your page. The strategy to populating this information is including your keyword phrase(s) in these places and keeping some consistency in the appearance of these keywords. Consider this: the Meta Description is read by people when determining which search result to click on. You want this text to be compelling and include your target keywords.
Creating Internal Links
Using links on your web site to point to pages you’re targeting is easy to do, but powerful in advancing your SEO strategy. By now, you have optimized some pages of your site for your target keywords. You should find opportunities to link to these pages using your target keywords as the anchor text in your link. For example: If you’re targeting the phrases ‘Internet Marketing’ find any existing links that point to the page you’ve optimized for this phrases and see if you can change the text that is linked from phrases like ‘read more,’ ‘click here,’ or ‘market on the Internet’ to your targeted phrases. (See Hyperlinks- Strengthen your Strands on the Web in this issue for more details). Don’t forget you can do this with your navigation menus as well as copy on your pages.
Build External LinksOf all the tactics above, this is probably the most difficult yet important piece of your SEO strategy. Building quality links from relevant and respected sites significantly boost results of your SEO efforts. Without good links pointing at your site, the effort you’ve put in may not yield any significant results. Paradoxically though, you need to do the previous four tactics before you build your links. Links pointing at your site without your site being optimized will yield little, or worse, the wrong results.
Link-building is so important to your SEO strategy that I’ll be writing another article next month on how to create and run a good link building campaign. Stay tuned.
Interested in Search Engine Optimization but don’t have the resources? Check out ISL’s SEO Consulting Services and get expert advice.