SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

GRASPING FOR THE GOLD RING 

Way back in beginning history of the internet a couple years ago, and before SMO (Social Media Optimization) became all the rage, the most asked question about web sites was, “How can I get on the first page of Google?” While it may be difficult to be at the top of the list on page-one of a Google search you can, with a little due diligence, get on the first page. 

Do a web search for “SEO” and you will find a plethora of differing third-party solutions all claiming they are the “ultimate solution to SEO”. All give good advice and for the most part all are over-kill for small to medium sized websites. However, if you have hundreds of pages of content and dynamically deliver data you should look to third party solutions.

For the rest of us there are four simple steps that go a long way to providing a sound foundation for your site’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
1.) Title Tag, Metatag Descriptions and Metatag Keywords,
2.) Keyword Density,
3.) H1 Tags,
4.) Inbound Links.

STEP 1. Title Tags, Metatag Descriptions and Metatag Keywords

Title Tags, Metatag Descriptions and Metatag Keywords reside in your website's HTML between the head tags. They are the descriptions that search engines use to find and rank you. Well, kind of. Supposedly Google doesn’t read Metatag Descriptions and Metatag Keywords anymore but Bing does. Who knows? Regardless of the “he said, she said” rhetoric I say err on the side of caution. Put ‘em in.

Title Tag Descriptions

Title Tags incorporate a brief description of who you are and what you do. This is the first basic step to defining your site and is often overlooked. Title Tags are unique to each page of your site by nature. If a page title in your site now says, "Welcome to Acme Widgets," I would suggest adding meaningful content, "Acme Widgets - for improved capability," following the basic who, what principal. Remember, this phrase has to fit within the width of the little tab at the top of a browser page--aproximately 20 to 25 characters.

Metatag Descriptions

A Metatag Description is one general statement of who and what you are. Here you apply the full who, what, where principal; "Acme Widgets, Inc, Anywhere, USA. Widgets for improved capability, etc., etc." Almost all search engines recommend a Metatag Description be shorter than 155 characters. That’s characters, not words.

Metatag Keywords

Metatag Keywords are specific descriptions of the products and services you offer. Once the darling of SEO, Keywords have fallen on hard times. Keywords became the target of spammers and ultimately unreliable and misleading as a major determining factor in SEO algorithms. The caveat here being the relationship Keywords have to page content, hence Keyword Density.
Note: The article "Google does not use keywords meta tags" states they have not used keywords for quite some time. However, I prefer to include them just for that reason. Knowing how often Google changes policy makes me want to error to the cautious side.

STEP 2. Keyword Density

A good rule of thumb is that every page should reflect at least one keyword from the Metatag Description or Metatag Keywords in your page content. More than one is good but do not try to overdo this rule by stuffing keywords.

If you are using “Acme Tour Boats” in, say, the Metatag Description (and you should) an example of how to place a keyword in the page content would be changing, “Our boat tour is  more than an awesome journey,” to “An Acme Tour Boat is more than an awesome journey.” All this SEO stuff is not exactly rocket science, just common sense. That is why you need a web developer to do it right, right?

STEP 3. H1 Tags

The Google ranking algorithm dictates that if you’re using a (h1) tag (or an h2, h3, h4) the text between these tags, (h1) Sample text goes here (/h1),  must be more important than the content between other tags like span class, (span class="definition") Sample text goes here (/span). Rules rule.

Developing a site using CSS3 (cascading style sheets) will automatically insure the use of h1, h2, h3, and h4 tags.

STEP 4. Inbound Links

Inbound Links are the links coming to you from other sites. If another site provides a link to you anywhere in their site, search engines consider that an inbound link and gives you a higher page rank. Search engines recognize your website to be valuable if another site hyperlinks back to you. At that point the link becomes reciprocal, i.e. a two way street.

Google says, "PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the incoming links from other pages. In simple terms, each link to a page on your site from another site adds to your site's PageRank. Not all links are equal: Google works hard to improve the user experience by identifying spam links and other practices that negatively impact search results. The best types of links are those that are given based on the quality of your content."
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769

Want to check your inbound links? Feeling lucky? Warning - this is a real ego check. Here is what you do. Type this address into a Google Chrome browser address bar or a Google search page in any other browser: 
link:www.http://yoursitename.com/  
My site, link:www.http://thilldesign.com got apx. 407 results, 
link:www.http://ibcrf.org got 1,470 results, 
link:www.http://cnn.com got 1,160,000,000.  
Results may vary. 

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