To some marketers, the very thought of SEO conjures up images of sleazy online ads and bare knuckle ranking competition. SEO is more than that, and if done properly, not only are going to pop up on the radar (well, searches) for potential customers, you’re solidifying your online reputation and brand.
Here are 20 amazing SEO tips that you should add to your marketing bag of tricks as soon as you finish reading this post.
1. Figure out the top 10 keywords that describe your product / company / service / mission. Keywords are the words that people will type into search engines to find you. Without knowing this list of words, you won’t be able to optimize your website and marketing material.
2. Keep your links as they are: instead of changing a link’s name to “Learn more,” keep it as “learn more about SEO”. This is an easy fix and a quick way to add more of the keywords you compiled in step 1.
3. Share the love: link to articles / blogs that your customers may enjoy; this builds your SEO karma. You get what you give when it comes to link building. If it is great content, share it with your readers regardless if it comes from your company or not (do reference it though).
4. Quality rules SEO, not quantity – when link building, link to sites / pages / articles that are relevant to you and your customers and aren’t “just there”. By sticking to your niche, it tells the search engines that you are an authority and have influence in your industry. If you post anything and everything, it can confuse the whole situation.
5. Create articles and blogs that are linkable and sharable (think like this article!) Pretty simple, awesome content will get shared and talked about. Try to do something that is not already out there.
6. Use as little flash as possible – spiders can’t read these. On top of that, users are over the cool factor of flash. It is great for a splash page but if you really want to show up in search engines, say no to flash.
7. But, spiders can read titles and descriptions of your images. Don’t forget the details. Add ALT tag information to every image on your site even if you think readers will never see it.
8. Remember that the words around your links and keywords are just as important as the keywords themselves. This is important but it should not stop you writing for human beings and not computers. Just really focus on the words you use when you are focusing on keyword placement.
9. Don’t write good content, write great content. Easy said than done of course. This is what separates the good from the bad when it comes to search. Your content needs to be relevant, engaging, timely and sticky. If you read it, would you share it with all your friends?
10. With your articles, focus on one keyword or phrase not a bunch. Take your list of 10 target keywords and write articles for each word. Don’t stuff words for the sake of it, the search engines are smarter than that.
11. Keep your content fresh and updated. Write, write and write. If you have a blog, try to update it at least once a week. The search engines learn your pattern and will start checking your blog for new content accordingly.
12. Understand social media’s role in SEO and make sure your sites are search friendly. Buttons, auto-links and whatever else way you can make it easy for someone to post your article on Twitter, Facebook and every other social site. People don’t want to jump through hoops to share.
13. Have a sitemap on your website. Very easy to add and don’t forget to keep it up to date.
14. Use captions and descriptions for images and graphics. Again, another great place to add in keywords. You need to take advantage of every piece of real estate on your page.
15. Exploit your website’s title tag characters by including your top keywords. It is there to use, don’t leave any characters behind.
16. If you hire out your content writing, make sure that it is original and not copied. In terms of this practice, you get what you pay for. Pay a little and get poor copy that has been taken from elsewhere, pay more and get the fresh content you need.
17. Next to keywords, links and tags are the most important SEO tools; make them as descriptive as possible. Just like images, this is a great place to add keywords. Don’t ignore this.
18. Link only to reputable and popular sites that are relevant to you and your customers. Look at the site’s Pagerank. Is it higher than yours? Then go ahead. Also look at the overall look of the site. Does it feel like a scam or shady site? Then it probably is.
19. Design your website to include links that duplicate your drop-down menus. Make all links and navigation consistent and keyword friendly.
20. Make sure that your website is properly maintained, doesn’t crash and loads quickly. Speed is one of the new benchmarks that Google uses to rank pages. Do everything you can to make your site load fast and avoid server crashes when a traffic wave hits it.
This post is brought to you by SimplyCast, a leader in multi-channel marketing automation and the home of The Epic Free Plan, which gives all users up to 5,000 email sends, 50 fax sends and 5 SMS sends every month for free, forever.
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February 10, 2012
SEO Optimization