Top 8 Tips & SEO Starter Guide

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide:  What SEO practices and tips you should apply to your website...at the very least!

Keep in mind that even though the title of this article states "search engine", the main reason you optimize your websites is for the benefit of your visitors.  The visitors to your website are the ones you are targeting, not necessarily the search engines. 

The reason we also focus on making your website "search engine" friendly, is that our visitors use the search engines to find us.  But focus on making your website “human” friendly.  Once you do that, “humans” will keep coming back since you’re website now offers an "enjoyable" experience.  Plus “humans” have MONEY to spend on you website!

You may have already applied some of these following tips to your own website.  And that is great!  We hope that these tips will give you some fresh ideas to help you improve your website, or maybe just remind you what it is you should do to keep you on the right track and keep your website irresistible to your visitors!  These tips can be applied to websites of all shapes and sizes.  Note:  Search Engine Optimization ONLY effects Organic Searches.  Not "paid" or "sponsored" results such as Google Adwords.

Reminder:  We would love to hear some of your comments, ideas, thoughts and success stories of your website in our comments section below.  So don’t be shy and leave a comment!

1.  Allow your visitors to understand your URL's  (Uniform Resource Locator)

Let's start at the top…Literally!  I have seen many URL title can be confusing and unfriendly.  Create a unique and accurate URL title that will explain the topic of your particular page.  Make sure to choose a URL that will be understood by both your visitors and search engines.  Having a URL that can easily be crawled by both your visitors and search engines will significantly increase your search engine ranking.  Plus, it will be much easier when organizing your web pages. 

The following example (image 1.1) shows a webpage that contains an unfriendly URL.  We can easily see that this page may contain something to do with invitations.  But other that, you really can’t tell what specifically this page could be about.  You many recognize you own “in-house” reference codes.  But your “human” visitors will have NO idea what to expect from this website. And if the search engine doesn’t recognize specific key words, then it will not be able to match it up with your “human” customers.

Image:1.1

Now check out this sample (image 1.2).  This URL contains the keyword(s)"traditional floral".  This URL clearly indicates that you find information about invitations that focuses on traditional floral designs.

Image:1.2

Top Tips

• Avoid using a title that has no relation to the content on the page.
• Avoid using a title that is vague like "untitled" or "New Page 1" or your own internal reference numbers.  Use only reference numbers, model numbers, part numbers that is relevant to your specific industry.
• All pages should have a unique title. Search engine REALLY hate duplicates!
• Use brief descriptive titles.  If you use a long title, Google will only show a portion of it in the search results.

2.  Concentrate on creating a descriptive "Meta Tag"

A Meta Tag is a page's description which gives Google and other search engines a summary of what your page is about.

•  A page title will may contain a word or two, a page’s Meta tag will be a sentence or two or a short paragraph.

• Meta Tag descriptions are important because search engines may use your Meta Tag as a snippet of what your page is about.  Or Google may use another portion of your page if the text is a better match of the users search words.

• Write a description that will both inform and interest your users if they saw your Meta Tag in the snippet area.  In other words…you’re your webpage!  Adding a good descriptive Meta Tag is always a good idea just in case Google cannot find good text to post in the snippet area.

• Words that match the users search text will display in bold in the snippet.  This gives the user a good idea if what he is searching for will be contained on your webpage.  Make sure to have a different description for each page.  This will help Google and your users correctly identify your page for their search terms. 

Top Tips

• Avoid writing a description that has no relation to the content on your website.
• A generic description like “This is a web page” or “This is a web page about invitations”.
• Filling the description with only key words that do not make up a sentence.
• Copying and pasting your entire web page content in to your Meta Tag.
• Avoid using a single description for all you web pages in the Meta Tag section.

3.  Ensure that your website is easy to Navigate

Making your website easy to navigate will give your users and easy way to find the content they are looking for. Thus making them stay on your website longer.  This will also significantly increase your search engine ranking.  (More about this later)

Plan out your navigation based on your home page.  Always think "simple" and "easy to use".  Provide a website that is "convenient", promotes "comfort", and is "enjoyable".

Webpages should have a "root" or home page which is usually the most frequently visited page on your website and the starting point for your users.  Does your home page effectively guide your visitors to other more specific content on your website?  It should.

Some websites will list products under specific categories, and then easily navigate you on to more specific sub-categories.  This is effectively done by using a row of navigation bars that are shown either to the right side of your website or across the top. 

Also make sure that each page of your website has a home breadcrumb link.  (a home link that will quickly navigate your users back to the home page)  This website has navigation bars in the upper right hand side.

Image: 1.3

This is the idea of a well structured website, where your home page is just two clicks away.  But also have a home "breadcrumb" link that will take your visitor back to your home page with one click!

Allow for the possibility of part of your URL being removed. For us older PC users, you may remember the days that we had to do this quite often, and so you should anticipate this happening.  Instead of using the navigation bars on your website, your visitors may delete a portion of your URL to find more generalized content on your webpage. 

Say they want to just see the most popular invitation that you have on your website.  By deleting "/2009/traditional_floral.html", this should take them right to the correct website.  (see image 1.4)

Image:1.4

Top Tips

•  Avoid a complex web of navigation links.  Don't link every page to every other page on your website.
• Try to always use text as your navigation links.  This makes it easier for Google (and users) to crawl your website and see all your links.
• Avoid having all your navigation links by using drop down windows, images, or navigation.  Many, but not all search engines, will be able to see such links on your website.  But by making easily to use text links, your visitors will have easier accessibility of your website. 
• Again, the longer your users stick around, the more likely Google will apply a higher ranking to your website!

4.  Optimize the images that will be used on your website

One of the most common mistakes I see when optimizing a website is when I navigate through images.  If you ever noticed the side navigation bar in Google after doing a web search, one of those navigational links will read, "images".  (this is the Google Image Search)  Click on this text link after doing a search for: "Wedding Invitations", and up will come many images of wedding invitations.

Skip out on naming your images "Wedding" or "Invitation" and you could be missing out on having your images being listed here.  Once your image is clicked, it will navigate back to your website! 

Top Tips

• Like many other parts in Search Engine Optimization, having image descriptions that are short and but descriptive always work best.
• Avoid using generic filenames like "image1.jpeg", pic2.png", or 1.jpeg. 
• Avoid writing extremely long filenames.
• Don't use entire sentences or stuffing the description with key words.
• Use an image websitemap file for all your images.  This will help the search engine crawlers identify your website correctly.

5.  Use larger text size to emphasize important information

The reason that we pay attention to text size is that it makes the flow of your article easy to read.  Again, promoting a website that is comfortable, convenient, and enjoyable.  Heading tags are used to display some sort of structure to your articles.  There are 6(six) sizes of heading tags, beginning with <h1>, this heading should display your most important information, and ending with <h6>, the least important information. 

Since heading tags will make your text larger than normal text on the page, this will give an instant visual cue to your visitors that this text is important and should be paid close attention too.  Also, using multiple heading sizes can create an arrangement of text from larger text down to smaller text, structuring your content, and making it easier to comfortable to navigate through your website.

</head>
<body>
<h1>Suzy's Wedding Invitations</h1>
<h2>Traditional Floral - Wedding Invitations</h2>
<p>Your parents may have chosen this invitation.  This beautiful design definitely holds the test of time.  Many couples consider and want to see all of our designs.  But in the end, they come back to the Traditional Floral design.  Brides all want a beauty that you can appreciate for years to come.

(Image 1.5) On a page containing a description of a product, we may put the name of our website in a <h1> tag and the topic of the story into an <h2> tag.

Top Tips

Write your content like your putting together an outline of your text.  Think about how to word the main topic of your text.  Then create sub-points of your content and decide where to insert your header tags to make your outline flow comfortably.

• Avoid using excessive heading tags throughout the page
• Don't erratically move from one heading size to another
• Avoid putting all of the page's text into a heading tag.
• Avoid using heading tags just for styling and not displaying structure

6.  Make sure you promote your website the Right Way

So I'm sure you have done some research elsewhere on this topic.  Increase your backlinks and you will increase the value of your website.  Yes, but be careful.  Search engines know that the links to your website will come with time, people will discover your content through searches and other ways and link to you.

Search engines also know that you would like to let everyone know about the hard work you've done in putting together your website.  Buy promoting your websites effectively, you can increase the time it takes for your websites to be discovered by those who are interested in the same subject.

Warning:  Be very careful with this tip.  Overdoing this recommendation will actually harm the reputation of your website.  Google, for example, is looking for websites that gradually and naturally gain backlinks over time.  Asking your 50,000 Facebook friends to put a link on their blogs and webpages back to your website, is just asking for trouble by facing possible removal of your website from the Google listing.  Plus you can severely ruin the reputation of your website with the search engines.

Make use of blogs to gain recognition online.  A blog post on your own website will let your visitors know that you have added something new.  A new article, a new product...this is a great way to get the word out to your followers!  Other webmasters who follow your website or RSS FEED could also receive your new content as well.

Offline promotion of your company or website will also be rewarding.  If you have a business website, don't forget to list your URL on your business cards, letterhead, posters, etc.  Be sure that when you send out email that your URL is included in your signature.

Top Tips

Interacting through social media websites is yet another avenue that you can match your content with interested groups of people with relevant content.

• Avoid promoting every new, small piece of content that you create.  Go for promoting just the BIG interesting items.
• Don't get envolved in schemes where your website is artificially promoted to gain ranking.  Again, Google looks for those websites that are natural that has grown organically.
• Keep in touch with other websites that are similar to yours.  This will usually spark additional content that you can use to continue building upon. 
• Avoid asking all the other websites in your community for backlinks.  This is considered spamming. 

Avoid purchasing links from another website with the goal to increase your page ranking.  Focus on quality traffic.  You will be satisfied with your results in the end.

7.  Offer quality content and services/products

The best interesting websites will naturally increase their recognition all by themselves.  This is probably the best tip of all!  Why leave it off to mention it towards the end ?  Because if I would have put it in the beginning, you would have just skipped over it!  Creating a quality useful website will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors that we discussed above.  Users know quality content when they see it.  And most likely want to tell others about your website.  This could be by using blog posts, social media websites, email, forums, or other means.

 Recognize that you will have a diverse audience, and offer a unique take with exclusive content.  Think about keywords that a user may use to search for your content.  Different users will use different keywords to search for your same content.  Some may use acronyms, others will be more specific.  Make sure to add all these different keywords naturally within your content for better search results.

Google Adwords provides a handy Keyword Tool that helps you figure out new keyword variations.  It will also show the search volume for a particular keyword.  Google Webmaster Tools is also a great free tool.  This tool will show you the top search queries your website appears for and the ones that led the most users to your website.

8. Make use of free Webmaster Tools.

Keeping an eye on your website to gauge your progress is an absolute must.  And since these tools are FREE, why would you not?  These tools are offered at no cost by most major browsers.  (Yahoo, Google, and Bing)  These tools will help you better control how Google interacts with your website.   

By using these tools doesn't mean that your website will gain rankings in the listing.  But it will help you identify any issues that if addressed, can help your website perform better in search results.  By using these services, you will be able to:

• See which parts of your website were not crawled by the search engines.
• Specify your preferred URL
• Identify problems with your title or meta tags
• Know which are the top searches that was used to find your website
• See how search engines see your websites
• Remove unwanted side links that Google may use in results

• Receive notification of any website guideline violations and request a reconsideration

Professional Analytics & Website Optimizer is possible with Google

Your almost done!  (But not really...)  Adjusting, tinkering, and tweaking content on your website will be an ongoing task as you continue to build your website.  But when you apply all of the above optimizations, you have applied powerful tools to improve your website.

How can I see how much traffic my website is attracting?  Answer:  Google Analytics!

After all that optimization, I am sure you are wondering how your website is doing.  Google Analytics is a very power tool to gain some insight on your progress.  You can use these tools to:

· Find out how user find and react on your website.

· Discover what is the most popular content on your website.

· Gauge how your optimizations impacted the quality of your website.  Did changing or adding a Meta tag effect the traffic entering your website?

If it seems like we have been persuading you to focus on having a good quality organic website, you're right!  The next time you do a search in Google, notice where your eyes go first.  Do your eyes look to the right side of the page towards the Ad words?  Mine don't.  Do they automatically "skip" the top colored section of the search and go directly to the "organic section"?  Mine do.  And so do 90% of Google users. 

You will be very happy with the results of your website if you do things correctly from the beginning.  Taking short cuts could lead to negative results.  Google Ad words is a good way to give you fast results.  But those results will stop when you stop paying. 

Creating a good organic website is FREE and brings you positive results that last forever!  (did I mention it was free? :)  This is why we push for having good quality websites that will bring value to yourself, your product, and to the whole World Wide Web.

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