There’s a lot to search engine optimization, so I’m going to cover some basics and leave it at that. First, let’s go over some key parts of SEO. Keywords are words that people use in search engines to find your website. These keywords can help determine your rank in search engines. This is why keyword research is a great way to gauge which ones to use and which ones would be too difficult to rank for. There are excellent tools for this investigation. One of the best ones to use is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, if you’re looking for a free resource. If you are willing to pay for more options to help you, you can use SEOmoz Pro subscription. These keywords should be used in several different places such as: images, categories, header tags, title tags, URLs, meta tags, and on your pages. These must be specific to each page and must be relevant. You don’t want to just throw in these keywords and not have them relate to what’s on the web page. Search engine crawlers will not be happy if you do this and this will result in you not ranking well. These crawlers are programs that will mathematically scan the web and evaluate sites to determine their ranking. One great thing to add to your website is a sitemap plugin that will automatically generate your sitemap. This provides a great roadmap for your website for web crawlers to use. This shows that your website is search engine friendly.
An important fact to note is that content is king. Your content is very important for SEO. You should be a resource for your website readers by providing quality content, not just writing the content around keywords. This is not to say that you can’t write content with keywords in mind, but you shouldn’t put keywords before content quality. If you write with the notion that content is king, you will provide great content for your website and therefore rank higher in search engines. Another great way to be a resource and provide quality content is to provide information through social media. In other words, write articles, blogs, and social media posts that provide useful advice and information to your audience. If you do this consistently and your followers share this information, you will become a well-respected site, and in turn, you will rank higher in search engines. I cannot stress enough that consistency is very important.
It’s also important to measure and track your website statistics to gauge the results of your efforts. This is done by installing analytics through a tool like Google Analytics. This will give you demographics, keywords used, traffic sources, repeat vs. new visitors, and much more. Let me say that SEO is not a quick thing. It takes effort, patience, and careful study to see results. But when the results do happen, it’s worth every effort put into it.
