Building A Web Presence That Kicks-A$$ On The Competition! (Part II)

Let’s continue on the journey of building your site to be SEO attractive to the various platforms (Google, Bing, Yahoo, AOL, Best Of The Web) that provide search results. In Part I we focused on the importance of Off Page SEO, in Part II we will be discussing On Page SEO.

On Page SEO is a foundational component in helping the various search engines, Google in particular, to know of the importance and relevance of your site’s content. The engagement of the user and also social media sharing are both determined by the quality of the content of your web site.

Even though we are focusing on making your site SEO honey, we must always adhere to this formula: “Write first for people, second for search engines”.

If you make your site too SEO heavy handed it may be very attractive to search engines, but to a visitor it will be gibberish, and really, that’s who we want to connect with. So remember BLEND, BLEND, BLEND your content. To optimize your web site and its various pages please follow these guidelines:

Meta Tags:
I have heard so many SEO people state that Meta Tags are dead. That could not be more incorrect. If you want to control how your link will be displayed on Google, for an example, Meta Tags are crucial. Using a meta description tag alone will dictate exactly how your link to your site will read. Meta Data Types Include: keywords, description, author, geo.position, geo.placename, geo.region. The last three meta data names are very helpful for local indexing.

Headline Tags:
Be sure to utilize headline tags that reference your primary keywords. These headlines indicate to search engines what the page is about. In particular, using H1 and H2 tags allows the search engine to create a hierarchy of each page’s content and the relevance to that content.

Keywords:
Utilize your keywords many times. By using keywords multiple times, you make your content more relevant to particular searches. Even using alternate keywords that resemble the main one can help boost the relevance of your article. (Remember! – Write for humans first, search engines second!)

ALT Tags:
Use ALT tags in order to describe your images, videos and objects whenever possible. Readers and search engines need these descriptions to make sense of the content they’re analyzing, so it is important to include them. This is also very helpful to visitors who are visually impaired. ALT tags help them to understand what images and objects are.

URLs:
Using concise and relevant URLs helps search engines to qualify the importance of a particular page. Avoid complex naming conventions (example: yourdomain.com/page?9852/base_asdqweio.html). Instead use logical, keyword rich file names. Don’t use dynamically generated URLs. WordPress is notorious for this. Using dynamically generated URLs is a sure way to NOT get your web pages indexed at all.

Google Site Verification:
I recommend that this be the finishing touch AFTER you have completed all of the suggestions above. When you verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools, it gives you access to reports about your site’s visibility and ensures that your site is indexed by Google on a faster, more regular basis.  It isn’t absolutely necessary to do this to be indexed, but it will give you one more advantage over your competitors who don’t.

We’ve covered a lot of information. If you find yourself overwhelmed by these tasks, or struggling with any particular component, please don’t hesitate to contact us, 360-260-0347 or sales@northwestwebcreation.com. We offer a FREE first time consultation to help guide you in the right direction.