If you are new to
SEO but feel that you can’t keep up with the changing search engine algorithms,
take heart. There are tried-and-tested elements that you can include in your
online article or write-up to help your site’s ranking among the search
engines.
SEO, or Search
Engine Optimization, is the discipline of influencing how a website appears
among the results presented by a search engine.
The closer the website appears to the first page of results, and the
closer it is to the top of the list, the higher its search ranking is.
Content is king
People visit your
page for a reason. Whether they do so because they want to learn something or
they want to be entertained, it is your job to provide them what they want or
they won’t come back, or worse, won’t spread the word about your site to their
friends.
By keeping your
website well-supplied with interesting, or better yet, compelling information
or images that your visitors will want to know more of, or experience, again
and again, you ensure that your site will merit repeat visits which search
engines will definitely take note of.
Creating quality
content involves getting to know your audience: what appeals to their curiosity
or sense of humor, what they talk about or what they like to share with their
friends. Keeping your audience in mind
will help you create content that is relevant and engaging.
Take note of your
title tag
Title tags are
texts that describe your page. After content, it is the second most important
factor that affects your site’s SEO ranking.
Since it appears as the clickable text in the search engine’s results
page, having a descriptive, relevant and compelling title tag – which also
includes the keywords you want to optimize – will generate more click-throughs
for your site.
Kick things off
with your keyword
A search engine’s
crawler will always begin its job at the start of the page. By ensuring that your keyword appears in the
start of your article, you are alerting the search engine that your page has
what it is looking for.
Mind your internal
links
Don’t be shy about
promoting your best content on your site; that’s what internal links are
for. Be sure to include relevant
keywords in your internal links as well; these alert the search engines that
the page being linked to is important.
Don’t go crazy with
keywords, though
It’s a fallacy to
think that the more times your keyword appears in your page, the better your
page’s ranking will be. Search engines
have evolved enough to detect this tactic.
Besides, seeing certain phrases appear again and again, regardless of
their relevance to the article as a whole, will simply irritate your site’s
visitors.
Don’t forget your
headings
When you break long
write-ups into sections, headings make it easier for the reader to locate the
section they want to refer to, right?
The same applies to search engines.
To differentiate your headings from the rest of your article, you use H1
tags. Placing these tags on your
headings will also give search engines a good indication of what your page is
all about.