Five Essential SEO items that you can’t neglect
As you may be aware, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is crucial to the success of your website.
Even if you have the most effective, well-designed, and comprehensive website in the business, it won’t amount to anything if it can’t be found on major search engines. The statistics below support that if your site isn’t on that all important first page of results, your website could be practically invisible to most internet users.
In monopoly terms, the first page of Google is Mayfair and Park Lane, anything else is Old Kent Road.
- #1 in a Google search gets 32% of all the clicks.
- #2 in a Google search gets 17% of all the clicks.
- #3 in a Google search gets 11% of all the clicks.
- 92 out of every 100 people who search on the internet do not go past the first page of their Google search.
Statistics courtesy of Chitika – Online Advertising Network
Small business proprietors often hand over the reins of their SEO to outside agencies, some of which are expensive and over-rated. What these business owners don’t realise is that there is a lot that can be done without any outside help at all. In this post, we will look the essential items that must be attended to for successful Search Engine Optimisation.
Note #1: For the tips below, it is assumed that you have access to your site with a Content Management System. If you don’t, then you are already behind the times. Upgrade that site today!
Note#2: For WordPress owners, make sure you have Yoast SEO, or All-In-One SEO installed in your plug-in. For other CMS’, do a Google search and find out the equivalent for your system. There are dozens of options.
#1 Page Content
As has been discussed in previous blogs, you must fill your pages with useful, appropriate, and high-quality content. The whole purpose of your site is to provide a service to your clients and prospects. Don’t lose sight of that goal! To boost your SEO, you need to use a mix of inbound and outbound links and this won’t happen without content that is helpful and valuable to your visitors.
#2 – Page URL
This is the name of the page that is used in the address bar of the web browser. If possible, use a couple of keywords in the URL that globally describe the content of the page. Don’t use spaces or underscores as these can confuse the Google bots, instead use hyphens to separate words.
If you are a WordPress CMS user, check your permalinks in the Settings section of your dashboard for this item.
#3 – Title Tags
A title tag is the small snippet of information that gets displayed at the top of a web browser. For your site, use your SEO plug-in (see above) and ensure that each page (and post) that you create has a relevant title tag that includes keywords from the text on the page.
#4 – Image ALT Tags
In the “old” days, ALT tags (the text that pops up when floating a cursor over an image) were used primarily to help visually impaired users of the web. These days, in additions to this important role they still play; ALT tags can be used to boost SEO by including keywords in them once again.
Are you starting to see a theme here? KEYWORDS are everything to SEO!!
#5 Keyword Overuse!
Despite what I have “pushed” throughout this post, Google will apply penalties if the keywords you use override your content. This is to prevent the brazen old practice of loading a page to the brim with visible and non-visible keywords. Nowadays, the content relevancy has been added into the Google page ranking algorithm and keywords must only make up between 5-7% of the overall page information.
Once you take care of the above, you’ll need to wait patiently for Google to re-index your site so that you can see the benefits of your efforts. If you don’t get the results that you want, look over the list again, check your site statistics and ensure that you are using the terminology of your potential clients. The question to ask is – What are they typing into Google to find you?