Climb That Results Page: 5 Basic SEO Tactics
by Jeff Solwuck


If you're like a lot of website owners, you want to see your website pop up very early on when people use a search engine. The process of making this happen is called search engine optimization, or SEO. There are tons of steps for you to take in this field; below are some of the basic ones.

The bulk of your SEO efforts, especially within your own website, are going to focus on the effective use of keywords. Well-chosen keywords employed in the right places and at the right density can provide a huge boost to your page ranking. The first place to look at including keywords is right at the top, in your titles. This means not just in the big, splashy title displayed on top of your content but also in your HTML. Each page in your site has a title tag; each one of these tags should include at least one of your chosen keywords. Just remember to make sure that the keywords you use here are germane to the content of the page!

As long as you are looking at HTML tags, it's time to consider the humble "meta" tag. This tag is intended to provide a summary of an individual webpage; it is not visible to readers in their browsers. The meta tag has had a stormy history in the world of SEO. Webmasters figured out years ago that they could cram their meta tags chock-full of keywords over and over in order to improve their rankings. Search engines figured this out fairly quickly, and they were not amused. Today, the pendulum has swung back in the opposite direction. Some search engines are looking at the meta tag again. When you see a site on a results page that includes a short summary beneath its link, that summary comes from the meta tag. Make sure that your tags are clear, honest, and contain keywords used in a logical fashion.

It's definitely worth considering your URLs from an SEO standpoint. First of all, if your web design software produces pages with generic URLs, (e.g. www.mysite.com/content/801325.htm) it's high time you changed things! Your URLs can and should include keywords, because the search engines will certainly find them. If you're using a keyword phrase with multiple words, separate them with hyphens, not underscores. (blue-boots, not blue_boots) Search engines read hyphens as word separators, so they'll link the former to a multi-word search but not the latter.

Speaking of URLs, remember that it's a serious no-no to publish the same content under different addresses. When search engines see this, they are likely to suspect trickery. You should avoid it whenever possible. It's not always possible, of course; the structure of your site or the way it links to other sites might make duplicate content a necessity. In these cases, investigate the HTML options available to you. There are a number of coding techniques you can use (including 301 redirects and the "canonical" tag) to keep search engines from getting the wrong impression from duplicate content.

Finally, a brief word about off-site SEO. Today most search engines try to evaluate the relevance and popularity of a page when they rank it. The links to that page from other websites play a large role in this evaluation. Links leading to your page can significantly enhance its performance, as long as they are high-quality links. As a general rule of thumb, you should be looking for links that lead from good content to good content. These demonstrate the highest level of genuine interest, and are weighted accordingly by the search engines.

You're now equipped with a few of the simpler SEO strategies available to you. Give them a try and see if you can have a positive impact on your search rankings. If you get good results, remember that there is always more to learn about and more to do when it comes to optimization.


Source: http://www.articlealley.com/climb-that-results-page-5-basic-seo-tactics-2427330.html