11 SEO Basics to High Search Engine Rankings

Consider the following 11 SEO strategies the next time you plan to sit down and take a good look at your SEO efforts. Keep in mind that SEO is both an art and a science and you want to keep a careful balance in the implementation process. In other words, you don’t want to get too carried away in any one area – and you don’t want your site to reek of SEO to your visitors or the search engines.

11 SEO Basics

1. Page Title Tags: This is the information you see in the bar at the top left corner of your browser when you visit a web site. Make sure your page title has your most important keyword phrase as the first words of your title, such as “Internet Marketing…”. Not, “We Offer Internet Marketing…”.

2. URL Extensions/File Names: This is the URL address information that follows the forward slash after your domain name, i.e., www.yoursite.com/internet-marketing. Include keywords in the names of your web page files as shown. If the most important keywords for the page are “Internet Marketing”, then the file name should be “internet-marketing”.

3. Meta Tags: Meta tags include description and keyword tags that are placed into your code to help the search engines and they are not visible to your visitors unless they look at the code of your web page. As with your page titles, your most important keywords should be right upfront in these tags. As a general rule, keep both your keyword tags and your description tags to about 150 characters.

4. Header Tags: These are the HTML codes that indicate a headline, such as H1, H2, and H3, and display as bold headlines on your web page. H1 tags can be a benefit to your SEO by placing your most important keywords within an H1 headline. Beyond that, don’t get too carried away with header tags since excessive use can trigger search engine SPAM filters. If your primary keywords are in an H1 tag at the top of your page, and within the content of your site, you’re usually good.

5. Alt Image Tags: The alt tag is a floating text window that appears when you hover your mouse over an image. These tags can be of benefit for associating relevant keywords with your images, i.e., to help text readers for the visually impaired read your page and for being found through image search. The key here is relevant, don’t stuff your alt tags with a lot of irrelevant words in an attempt to trick the search engines. Keep them on target and to the point.

6. Content Formatting: Search engines pay attention to text content that’s formatted in bold, italics, and underlined. Tactfully bolding and italicizing your keywords in your content is a great way to point these words out to the search engines. However, keep away from the underlining since most people consider underlines to be links.

7. Keyword Density: Keyword density refers to the number of times your keyword or keyword phrase appears within a web page. Keyword density should range between 2% to 7%, and it is best to evenly weave your important keywords throughout the content of your page.

8. Anchor Text: Anchor text refers to the text of links on a web page that link to another page. If you’re linking to a page on your site about Internet marketing, don’t use a link that says, “Click Here”, have the anchor text of the link as “Internet Marketing” instead.

9. Inbound Links: Inbound links are critical to achieving high rankings in the major search engines, especially Google. However, the days of simply exchanging links with others no longer holds the value it once did, since search engines now pay attention to both the quality and popularity of the site linking to yours. Some of the best ways to gain quality inbound links include developing links from quality directory sites and press releases. These methods are also easier to employ than hunting for link exchange partners.

10. Fresh Content: Search engines have always loved fresh, quality content, and have a tendency to rank such content higher (hence the large number of eBay and CraigsList listings found in search results). The search engines are always looking for quality content to provide their users, so you should make it a goal to provide the search engines with what they’re looking for.

11. Site Maps: Site maps are of benefit in helping search engines to better crawl your web site. All sites should have both an HTML site map page and an XML site map such as a Google Sitemap to help the crawling and indexing process.

Optimizing a web site for better search engine rankings takes a lot of time and work. Whether it’s conducting keyword research, or implementing unique Meta tags throughout a 6,000 page site, nothing happens by itself. However, the hard work, or costs of hiring a professional SEO to do the work for you, can be well worth it in comparison to paying for all of your traffic via pay-per-click programs. Make it your New Year’s resolution to optimize your site to rank higher in the search engines – better yet, do something about it today!