On-site SEO Optimization in 7 Simple Steps

 

If you’re looking to optimize your website for SEO…and quickly, check out these seven simple SEO tips to increase traffic to your website. Courtesy of Google’s own Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, implementing these pointers will help get your SEO efforts off the ground. When starting from scratch, you should see results within a couple days—maybe longer, depending on how long it takes Google to crawl your site.

Reference each bullet point with the image below, and you’ll be one step closer to a better optimized website. Now get to it!

On-site SEO Optimization Checklist

1. Quality Content is Key: Write compelling content that users will not only want to read, but share as well. The higher the viral potential, the more traffic to your site.

2. Page Title (or Title Tag): The contents of the page title are displayed on the Search Engine Results Page (also know as SERPs), so it’s important to ensure the keywords (KWs) in your page title are relevant to the user’s search.

3. Meta Description: This is the description below the page title on the results page, providing a summary of the content to be found. Include relevant KWs where appropriate.

4. H1/Heading Tag: This is the heading above the main copy on a webpage. Again, include relevant KWs where appropriate.

5. Keywords: Users type in KWs or KW phrases to find information relevant to their search. In order for these users to find you, you’ll need to include targeted KWs where relevant within the areas mentioned throughout this article. As for researching which KWs to include, Adwords’ “Keyword Tool” is a good starting point.

6. URL (or Alias): Memorable URLs, like <www.toprankblog.com>, are easier to remember and more likely to be revisited without search.

7. Image Optimization: Image traffic has great potential to bring visitors to your site, so it’s best to optimize images in the following two places: 1) the File Name should include relevant KWs (i.e. <a-b-testing-email-marketing.jpg>), and 2) ALT Text, the KW phrase that appears upon mouseover.

Posted in 'Insight' on May 8, 2012