Introduction to SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the visibility or ranking of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “organic” or unpaid search results. Obviously a higher ranking website gets more traffic.
SEO focuses how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or “keywords” typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content and HTML code to increase its relevance to specific keywords to increase indexing when of search engines crawl the site.
Here is a short video introducing SEO by SearchEngineLand
SEO Backlinks
SEO also includes back links and inbound links.When a site links to yours it acts like a reference. Search engines see you are recommend as a trusted source. Search engines consider the site the link is coming from, the site it links to, and the title (keywords) of the link.
Onsite SEO
Onsite SEO includes optimization of the site itself. Many factors are evaluated on the website.
Site / Page Title Tag
The title is very important. This tells search engines what the site or page is about.
Page Description (Meta Tags)
Meta descriptions allow you to influence how your web pages are described and displayed in search results. A good description acts as a potential organic advertisement and encourages the viewer to click through to your site. Although Google does not look at meta tags other search engines like Facebook do.
Heading Tags
Heading tags are like paragraph or section titles. Like a table of contents they help search engines see what the page is about. <h1> tags have the highest priority and are called the main heading. In WordPress the page or blog post title is an <h1>. <h2> through <h6> tags are sub headings. Most pages never go below a <h3> or <h4> tag.
Image Tags
Image and Alt Image tags are also considered when a search engine is defining your relevance to search terms. The image tag is the title of the image. The alt image tag is the text displayed in case the images fails to display.
Content
Content is King. It is very important to have fresh and relevant content. Keyword density is also important. Try to use different variations of your keywords throughout the page. The pages ratio of text to code should be between 25 to 70 percent.
Outbound Links
Outbound link show you are a good resource for information. Check all you outbound links on a regular basis. Broken links send visitors to non-existing web pages. Not only is it a bad experience for the visitor but it is also bad for SEO.
More SEO
As you can see Search Engine Optimization is very detailed and can include many different factors. This post is limited and gives only a basic explanation of SEO. For a more detailed explanation there are many YouTube videos available on the topic. Please be cautious as many are outdated and give false or misleading information.
Follow this blog as we will we dive into SEO in more detail over the next couple of weeks.
