We all want to rank well on Google, and frankly if you are not being easily found on Google, you are facing an up-hill battle for online success.
Paying a company to do your SEO can be quite expensive, although the rewards can be massive! But if you want to at least do the basics yourself, this tips article is designed to give you some help with the basic things needing attention and can be easily done with little web knowledge.
1. Key words in your web address
Using your keywords in your web address helps tell the search engines you are legitimate and exactly what you do. It can help make your site more significant.
2. The title tag
I read articles that say Google places little or no importance on Meta tags, but I strongly disagree and have proven it many times. Use your keywords here. You can see what is in your Title Tag in the top left of your browser when you are on a page, (or in the Tab if you use Tabs). To edit this you can simply open your web page in Notepad and you’ll see <title> at the top.
3. The meta description tag
The contents of your Description tag can often be seen in the results page of the search engine, below the site names. This should have your keywords in sentence form, while also giving a message that encourages people to click on your site link. Edit the same as above.
4. Alt tags
Using alt tags for your images tells search engines more about your site, and if the images are linked it also helps embed anchor text. Where ever you have an image you should see an alt tag, which is often empty. Edit same as above.
5. Keywords used in your document
Have good quality keywords in your content, in normal sentence form, as this will have a big impact or your results. Be careful not to ‘stuff’ keywords, as Google does not like this and can affect you adversely.
6. Site linking structure
Make sure you have links to all your site on all your pages so that search engines can spider throughout the whole site and see all your pages and content. Use good keywords as the links. Some sites are made in a way that search engines cant get past the first page as the site menu is made in a way/language it can follow.
7. Website age
The age of your website can have great impact in Google.. you will often here “Google loves old websites”, and if you frequent any sites selling websites, age adds to the value greatly.
8. Outgoing links
Linking to relevant sites helps establish you as truly being who you say you are and helps your establishment in Google. If you sell flowers and link to a football club, you will gain no benefit, but if you link to a nursery you will both benefit.
9. Incoming links
This can be one of the most powerful methods for achieving high ranks in Google. If you can have relevant sites with a high Page Rank (do a search on this to learn more & it’s importance), you can boost you SEO efforts dramatically.
10. Home page
Don’t expect pages deep within your site to rank well easily. First concentrate on the Home page, then the other pages.
Hope you found this article helpful and useful. If you have any questions or suggestions for any articles, please feel free to let me know.
