The tips listed below are the basis for any good organic SEO campaign and can be utilized by any webmaster as the basis for optimizing their website.
1) Keyword Research
Choosing the right keywords is the most important factor in the success of your SEO campaign. Finding the keyword phrases that people are actually typing into the search engines to find your website’s product or services is job number one. Don’t just trust what you think people are typing in but utilize a keyword research tool to find out what the most searched for keywords are for your websites content and target those phrases.
2) Add Relevant Keywords to the Title Tag
Once you have completed your keyword research you will need to place your relevant keywords into the
Title section of your Web page.
3) Use Heading tags.
Proper use of the heading tags will enhance the use of your keywords. At the beginning of your Web page, include an H1 header tag that uses the keywords you have chosen to use in your page title. This is not only good for search engines but is good for letting your visitors know what the page they are viewing is about.
4) Place your keywords throughout the pages content.
Once you have found your keywords and placed them in your Title tag and H1 tag, the next step is to add them to the main body content of your Web page where appropriate.
5) Use ALT tags for your images.
ALT tags when used with images provide a description of the what the image is in the event that the image doesn’t load for some reason and provides a description for users that browse the Internet using text to speech programs.
ALT tags are also read by the major search engines to help them determine what a Web page is about and provides an extra spot to use your targeted keywords to gain recognition in the major search engines.
6) Use text links for your navigation menu.
Where possible use text links for your navigation bar as search engines have an easier time following text links than menus created with graphic or Javascript menus and include your keywords in your text link menu.
If you have used images or JavaScript for your navigation menu include a text link in the footer section of your Web page’s that point to a site map page so search engines will still be able to easily find all your content.
7) Implement a site map page.
A site map page is a page that can be used to help search engines a secondary route to navigate through your site by containing text links that point to all the pages of your website.
If you have a large website then adding text links to your site map isn’t feasible for every page so adding text links to the most important parts of your site will still allow Google to crawl your site. If you have a large site, consider submitting a site map file to the major search engines to allow them to access all your content.
Add keywords to your URL’s and file names.
When creating a Web page try to fit in the keywords you are going to target for that page into the file name so your keywords will show up in the URL of the Web page. Adding keywords to your website’s URL’s will help search engines and visitors understand what your pages are about.
Instead of calling a page “/article#105.html” try to give it a bit more of a descriptive file name that includes the keywords you are targeting if the page is about golf putters then a file name such as “great-golf-putters.html” will have a much better chance of being ranked in the search engines than the first example that merely uses “article#105.html” which isn’t very descriptive to visitors or search engines.
As a quick example of how important it is to include your keywords in your Web page’s URL’s do a quick search on Google for any keyword term and you will see that almost all of the websites on the first page have included their keywords in their Web page’s file names so their keywords show up in their websites URL’s. This should give you a good indication of how important it is to include relevant keywords in your Web pages file names.
9) Acquire backlink’s for your website.
Acquiring backlink’s to your site once you have finished your on-site optimization will be your next goal. What you will need to do is find relevant sites that fit with the overall theme of your site and ask that website if they will give a backlink to your website.
Essentially the more links you have pointing to your site the higher recognition Google will give to your site. Google feels that each link coming to a website is a vote in support of that particular website and the more links a certain website has the higher Google will rank it in its search results over a competing website that has little or no links pointing at it.
Not all links are created equal though. If you get links from website’s that have been around for along time and have a lot of backlink’s themselves than Google will treat these links as meaning more than a backlink that comes from a website that has very few backlink’s and hasn’t been around on the Internet very long.
That’s why its important to get links from well established website’s like the DMOZ the Open Directory Project which Google uses to build its own directory listings from and Yahoo! Directory which has been around for a very long time. One link from either of these two directories will count a lot more than acquiring thousands of links from sites that have little to no backlink’s coming to the them.
If you can acquire one-way backlinks to your website without having to give a reciprical link in return then the search engines will give more weight to these links then they will to a simple exchange of links between two websites. Directories are a great source of acquiring one-way links to your website.
Getting backlink’s to your site is a time consuming and often tedious process but if you stick with it you will start to see the benefits for your website as your website climbs up in the search engines results.
10) Include your keywords in your links anchor text.
Anchor text refers to the visible text portion of a link. The major search engines places great emphasis on a links anchor text and it is a very important part of the major search engines ranking algorithms to give relevance to what is written in the anchor text of a link as it helps search engines and visitors figure out what the page being linked to is about.
So the next time you are linking to a page on your website, use a descriptive keyword that is also being targeted on the page that is being linked to. This will help your ranking in the major search engines for that particular keyword phrase and will also help your visitors figure out before they click on your link what your page will be about.
Conclusion:
As you can see the basis for any good SEO campaign is good keyword research and where you use those keywords on your Web page. The other part of a good SEO campaign is acquiring links back to your site from other website’s on the Internet.