SEO Tips for Newbies
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase search engine rankings and traffic.
In this Post I have listed 12 tips in order to improve your on page SEO.
1. Internal Link Architecture
Make your site easy for the user; a good linking structure should only be 2-3 clicks away from the homepage. If your site is easy to navigate and has a flat hierarchy it will make the search engines job of crawling ad indexing your site relatively simple.
2. Bot Accessibility
Add a robots txt file this allows search engine robots and spiders to crawl your site so that your pages can get indexed by the search engines. There may be pages on you site that you don’t want the search engines to index or to follow. You can limit the bot accessibility by adding parameters such as “no index” and “no follow”
3. Sitemaps
You should have two site maps one for the user and one for the search engines. A site map for a search engine is an XML file that contains a list of site URLs. By adding a site map you are helping the search engines to index your site.
4. URL Structure
When creating URLS ensure it contains the target keyword for that specific page. Your URLS should be short and static, dynamic URLS have too many parameters and do not get indexed as quickly.
5. Server Response Codes
Check your server responses codes to ensure that you server and web browser are talking to each other. Click here for list of codes
Tags
6. Title Tag
The Title tag is visible in the browser and should reflect the content of specific page. It is important you include the core keyword in the title tag and do not stuff it with a list of keywords. It should not be less than 6 words and not greater than than twelve, with a range of fifty to eighty characters, this includes spaces, hyphens, commas
7. Meta Description Tag
Meta description tag is what appears in the search engines. If you don’t write a Meta description the search engine will take a snippet of text from your site instead. If you write your own meta description make it compelling to the reader so you can increase your click thru rates. Ensure that it contains the most important keyword found within your content. The description should be between 12 to 24 words.
8. Meta Keywords Tag
The Meta keywords tag can only be viewed by the search engine or by the user if they view the sites source code. The Meta keyword tag should include the most important keywords for that webpage. Historically the Meta keywords tag has been over used and stuffed with keyword which has resulted in spammy sites. Thus over time this tag has become less important in influencing search engine rankings.
9. H1 Tag
The H1 tag should include your core keyword, the purpose of the H1 tag is to reinforce the importance of a keyword to the search engine.
10. Internal Anchor Text
You should include your target keyword in your internal anchor text.
<a href=”http://www.dietscentral.org”>DietsCentral</a>
In this example, the code simply indicates that the text “DietsCentral” (called the “anchor text” of the link) should be hyperlinked to the page http://www.Dietscentral.org.
11. Alt Tags
As search engines cannot view images by using an Alt tag you can attach a keyword to an image.
Alt Tags help reinforce the importance of a keyword and can help improve rankings.
<img src=”internetmarketing.gif” alt=”internetmarketing” />
12. Unique Text Content
Although you can optimize your webpage to target specific keywords, you will only achieve decent search engine rankings and traffic if you have unique content. Unique content can be articles, blogs, videos, UGC, podcasts etc
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