Learning SEO basic teaching resources

Eleven simple SEO tips.

 

1. Title tag should be no more than 60 characters long. Remember this will appear as your strap line in Google’s listing.
2. Description tag should be descriptive. Remember this could appear as your text in your Google listing and should be no longer than 170 characters
3. Keywords up to ten per page but they must appear in the body content. The more you use the bigger the page, also keyword density reduces with more content.
4. Page names should be descriptive.
5. Each page should have a unique title, keywords and description tag.
6. Page content should not be spammy. I.E. It should be written for the end user not Googlebot.
7. H1 tags should be in the page.
8. Alt tags with title tags should describe images and not use keywords.
9. All internal links should use the full url.
10. JavaScript should be called on to the page instead of being on the page. The most common mistake is style sheet information on the page itself.
11. Hidden text such as white on white is a no no.

 

If you want to optimise your own website then these guidelines are a great starting point in this tutorial we will cover. Keyword selection, title , keywords and description tags plus content on the page and duplicate content.

First decide what keyphrases you want to optimise for. Its no good just guessing and then hoping for the best you just won't stand a chance. With over 1 trillion web pages and documents on the internet you need a method.

Try using the Google keyword tool but before you do look at what your competitors are doing first. When using the tool we advise using the website content option and place the domain name of a top 5 competitor. This enables you to be able to see what they are using.

Having chosen your keyphrases it's time to create your title, keywords and description tag. Please note all three tags are important when it comes to getting your website listed effectively.

Your title tag should contain no more than 60 charachters, a space is a charachter in computer speak. it should look like this in the code <title>widgets supplier houston texas</title> Notice no funny characters like :: or commas or fullstops are required. just your keyphrases and perhaps your company name at the end.

Next Your keywords tag. This one is slightly more complex as you need to decide which phrase is your primary phrase, this must go first followed by a comma then the next phrase and so on. It should look like this <meta name="keywords" content="phrase1, phrase2, phrase3"/> notice I just placed three keywords in here the reason being that it is difficult to write a single web page and cover more than three keywords. I like to keep it simple. Remember that the title tag should contain the primary keyphrase first in it as well. NB Google, Yahoo and Bing State that they don't use the keywords tag. But many other smaller search engines do. It's also to be noted that about 4 out of the top 5 results in Google show sites that have the keyword tag populated so whatever you think I would always add a keywords tag to each page of your content.

Next the description tag. Beware do not repeat your keywords one after another in your description tag. The description tag should be a "Description of your web site page" it should contain about 160 charachters. It looks like this <meta name="description" content="place your 160 charachter description here"/>

Now having sorted that bit out you need to create original title, keyword and description tags for every page of your website. DO NOT use the same tags on every page. If you do Google could ignore large chunks of your website.

Now make sure that the content on your web pages is unique, interesting and informative. Having chosen your keyphrases make sure that you include them in the text on the page.

Before you dive in really research your business sector and identify keyphrases that you will be able to rank in Google on so for instance if you choose a phrase like "insurance" I hope you have a few years to wait before you rank highly. However if you chose "insurance broker Houston texas" you would stand a much better chance of gaining position. Be careful here. if you choose long tail keyphrases you may not get as much traffic however it will be better targetted with a higher chance of conversion than more generic keyphrases. Geographic reference is also very important too.

Some don'ts

DON'T copy text from a competitors website and use it on your own. Google has something called a duplicate content filter and your page will be ignored or even worse you could possibly get a penalty or even a ban by doing this.

DON'T steal pictures from other websites.

DON'T pretend to be or mimmick another company.

DON'T use brand names in your keywords or title tags unless you own the brand or have permission to use the brand name.