Great Hints And Tips For Search Engine Optimization

The process of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is all about making sure your website gets found through the search engines before any other site. However, this has to be done through free processes, rather than paid for advertisements. Hence, it is about creating organic and natural listings (also known as editorial listings), which all the search engines look for through their robots and crawlers. Google is, of course, the largest of these search engines and the reality is that it is their algorithms that truly matter, as the likes of Bing and Yahoo effectively use the same ones. These algorithms are changed regularly and make it clear what they consider to be relevant information to users. Getting SEO right is a highly specialized skill. However, the following hints and tips may just help you along your way.

1 – It’s All About Your Content
Content is the most important part of your website and this is what the search robots look for. You may have already heard of keywords, which are terms that the robots look for in order to rank your page. However, you can’t simply fill a page with nothing but that keyword. Robots know how to read and if they see this, they know you are spamming them. This will penalize your site, if it doesn’t get you banned. That being said, what does good content look like?

You need to provide content that has different information than what is on other sites and other Web pages.

Besides having something unique and entertaining to share with people, you also have to make sure that your content remains up to date. Hence, add something new on a daily basis if possible. SEO copywriting is a complicated skill, so don’t be disheartened if you are incapable of doing this. It is possible to hire people to do this for you at very acceptable rates, particularly when you consider the return they will give you.

2 – Get Your URL Right
A lot of people forget that the URL of their website is also very important. You have an opportunity to put a keyword in the URL of each of your pages and you should use this opportunity as much as possible. However, the title description is actually more important, because you can add not just a keyword, but also keyword related phrases in there. Hence, both work in synergy with each other and should both be done right. At the same time, you have to make sure your meta description is right as well. This is the little piece of information people see if they actually find your page on Google. If you don’t fill this in manually, Google will simply pick some of your page, and if your introductory paragraph isn’t amazing, then you may just miss out.

Front load keywords that are relevant to the article. If you like formulas, ask “Who? What? Why? When? Where? How?” That’s a formula journalists use to report. It works equally well writing descriptions.

You also need to make sure your meta description is unique and short. Google only allows for 160 characters. That is only marginally longer than a Tweet.

3 – Become an Expert
It is important that you understand the processes of SEO yourself. You have to become fully committed to this area of work and verse yourself appropriately in what it means and how it works. This doesn’t mean you actually have to do everything yourself. As said earlier, you could decide to hire a content writer if you feel your writing skills are not good enough. However, just because you hire someone to do the work for you doesn’t mean you can get away with not understanding the principles behind the work itself. Hence, spend as much time as possible learning about SEO.

If you’re taking the do-it-yourself route, you’ll have to become a student of SEO and learn as much as you can. Luckily for you, there are plenty of great web resources (like Search Engine Land) and several terrific books you can read. (Yes, actual printed books!).

You also have to make sure you always stay up to date with developments. Google changes its algorithms regularly to make sure people don’t find ways to spam their rankings. This keeps web developers on their toes and forces everybody to make sure their pages are always up to date.

4 – Social Media
One of the ways that the world of SEO is changing at present is through social media. People are using social media and hashtags more and more often in order to link people to sites or information. If you are building a website, you have to make sure you have a strong social media presence as well. Most website developers now have widgets that allow you to link straight to social media and you have to use these to your advantage. Any post you put on your website should be shared on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Google+ is not overly popular yet, but the reality is that it is made by Google and that they will therefore give you brownie points for using it.

5 – Know What Not to Do
Last but not least, you also need to know what you have to make sure you never do. There are certain actions that can get your page banned for life, meaning that you may still have a running website, but you will never appear in any of the search engines. Some things to absolutely avoid include redirecting to new domains, linking to invisible images, using invisible text, creating doorway pages and cloaking your website. These are the types of things you could do in order to meet all the requirements for the algorithms without making your website look stupid. For instance, you could have a hidden page filled with nothing but keywords and keyword related text. You then hide this page so your customers don’t see it, but the robots do, instantly propelling you to first place. However, the Google robots will discover this and you will be banned as a result.