Beginners SEO Guidelines – The Basics are often the Best!
Seek and you will find!
The web is an open place and pretty much everything anyone is doing can be seen if you look. If someone else is having success through the natural listings then so can you. It may take money and time, but success can be achieved.
Positions are useless without conversions
Traffic without conversion only costs you money, firstly, through SEO, then through bandwidth and through missed opportunities. You can gain positions, but if the site is fundamentally flawed as a sales tool your positions will not gain you more business.
Google isn’t the only search engine but it is the biggest
You want targeted traffic and other engines can deliver it to a certain volume but Google has the biggest share of the marketplace. Remember Google is a hard task master but gains with them also means gains with the other search engines. Agencies that claim great success in Yahoo and MSN but no success in Google are masking the truth.
Links are King
Links are how the search engines find your pages in the first place. The number, quality and relevance of the links then affect the pages ranking. Build quality links and you will build your search engine performance.
Content is Queen
Unique, relevant, updated and keyword rich content is what search engines want to find when they reach your site. If you have the right content in the right format you will get noticed. Make an effort!
Rank the content not the site
Search engines are looking for content relevant to specific searches. Make the pages topic centric. Don’t confuse the page with too many subjects.
Get your keywords right
Make sure you use keywords that users use to search for your type of content. The way you refer to your business is not necessarily the way the user does. Remember short and long tail phrases. Make your pages rich but not with spam!
Track your visitors
See what they do on the site and optimise the pages they visit. Also see how they found you and optimise the route (this will often be specific to keywords).
Titles tags, heading and URLs
Once you’ve got your main keywords and built them into your page make sure the collars and cuffs to match.
The write stuff!
You should face each page like a copywriter. It’s easy to develop clunky copy if all you’re thinking about is keywords. You must get the tone of the copy right. You should be in engaging, succinct and on topic. Use catchy headers, bullets and call to actions. Avoid overload on a page, link to more detail. Avoid over repetition of keywords but ensure there are enough.
Un-sitely?
Use sitemaps in the right way. Don’t stuff unlinked content into the sitemaps it won’t get counted and may get you penalised. Use a tool like sitemaps.org; it will keep you up to date on what you need to do so that the web crawlers from all three of the big search engines are updated on the changes on your site. However, sitemaps won’t solve any onsite SEO issues if there are any. They’re just an extra tool.
If you build it they will come
Link building is a primary force within SEO. But why not just build a site that people want to link to in the first place. If you truly have something interesting, or unique, or of particularly good value on your site, word will spread and people will link.
Don’t block the bot!
Make sure there are no technical hurdles to crawlability. Viewing a site through a text browser like Lynx will show exactly how much is visible. It will show you if Flash, Java or Frames are potential obstacles to success.
Go direct to directories and do not pass go
Submit your site to Open Source Directory (DMoz.org) plus industry and geo specific directories.
Link to your inner karma
Include a clearly visible sub navigation row of text links at the bottom of the page. Add a hierarchical ’sitemap.html’ page. Make sure links that are in text include descriptive keywords.
