You know you need search engine optimization (SEO). You’re positive it’s an integral part of your online presence as a business. But when someone mentions SEO, your eyes glaze over with boredom.
If you’re like me, you hear the voice of the classroom teacher from the Peanuts cartoon at any mention of SEO (wah, wah…wah wah wah):
SEO can be overwhelming if you’re trying to do everything, especially by yourself! So, this information is meant to help you understand a little bit about optimizing your website for search engines. Improving your search results in Google is possible with a few tweaks.
This blog discusses some simple SEO strategies. To take action on these strategies, visit 5 Ways to Boost Your SEO Without a Professional (Part 2).
Five Simple SEO Components That Boost Your SEO
You don’t have to rush on over to your website to do these right now. I suggest you include these SEO items on each page that you create moving forward. Then update your existing pages by scheduling a few changes per month. And if you don’t know how to update your site, check out next week’s article for more details.
Title tags
These appear in the search engine snippet and are the headlines that help grab the searcher’s attention. They also show in the browser tab at the top. Keep title tags under 60 characters, be specific about the page you are writing it for, and use your keywords where they naturally fit.
Meta description
This also appears in the search engine snippet and explains (in under 160 characters) what the page or blog is about. Again, describe the page using keywords, but keep it short and natural.
Internal links
Links are one of the other main keys for SEO, but internal links are ones that help the reader as well as the search engine spiders. As you are reading this blog, you will notice links that take you to other pages on our website–those are internal links–which help you navigate our site and the spiders to know where to go next.
Header tags
Also—known as h1, h2, h3 tags—are a means of text styling for ease of reading and visual hierarchy. They also tell the search engines what the next section is about and where the importance lies.
Reminder: don’t forget those keywords! But, it’s more important to be natural than stuffing keywords where they don’t need to be.
Alternative tags
Also known as alt tags, alternative tags are SEO magic for images. Consider when you save your picture from your camera or phone; it has a title that is likely in the format IMG_1234.jpg. Not the best ‘title’ for your picture!
Alt tags provide a text alternative of the image for screen reader users. In other words, if someone can’t see your image, there are tools that will read your alt tag to the user so they understand what your image represents.
Try 1) naming the picture what it is, and 2) adding an alternative title (aka the alt tag) to give it a more keyword rich description.
Not sure how to update your website with these strategies?
No problem! Visit Part 2 of this blog post where I show you how to easily update your own site!
There are many optimization tactics, but if you could tackle just these five, you would be ahead of those competitors who aren’t doing anything to improve their SEO.
Interesting read a very good series for beginners and I totally agree with you many of the basic fundamentals are easily done by yourself now going to read the second part fo this post
Hello Hammad, these two SEO posts are definitely written for the novice and DIYer looking to start managing their own optimization. I’m not an SEO expert, so my goal was to introduce a few things business owners could do to help themselves. Thank you for your compliments and for stopping by to leave a comment–I appreciate it!
Thanks Megan, just what I need, as my SEO needs to get better. 🙂
Thanks for the simple explanation! I never really got what Alt Tags were for… I love how you tackle such a complex topic in plain English! 🙂
Good stuff! I agree that many things you can do yourself, as long as you get yourself into the habit. However, I am not an SEO expert and I think it’s important to have on in your bag of tricks. 😉
SEO basics are a good habit to develop, that’s for sure Jackie. There are many layers to SEO, but even the small stuff is so important. Thanks for your comments!
Loved this, of course… as I DO love SEO and I especially loved the cartoon because it is so true that many get that deer in headlights or lost look on their face when I speak (about seo). Great that you are getting this out there!
Yes, you do love SEO, don’t you? LOL I could totally relate to the Peanuts cartoon because SEO is not my favorite topic. But we all know it’s important. The follow-up article will be helpful, I just know it. 😉
Sounds so easy. . .any tips on how to choose key words? I put in titles and meta descriptions. WP kindly (I think) ranked my SEO attempts with colors. None of them were green. 🙁
Hi Brenda! The topic of keywords could be it’s own blog article, that’s for sure. One way to research keywords is to use http://buzzsumo.com/…it’s very expensive, but you can do one or two content searches for free each day. A free researching option is http://keywordtool.io/. Or there is a more robust keyword tool called http://www.longtailpro.com/, which is a one-time fee of $97. Longtail Pro can cut down on some of the manual work to researching keywords. There is a sweet spot where you want to land. You want a longtail keyword that’s searched for but that is not written about extensively–if you’re trying to rank. In my opinion, the easiest and the best plugin to use is Yoast SEO. (However, I have heard the latest update was a little buggy.) Yoast SEO helps me hit the green color all the time. 😉
Great stuff, Meghan! I didn’t know about title tags, and I was doing alt tags wrong, so I’m looking forward to the next installment.
Glad to hear that the article helped you, Carol! So often I find that business owners don’t know the basics–and are often not interested in learning but know they need to do a few things. I’m tickled pink that this week’s article will assist in improving SEO for you! Thanks for the comment.
Love how you simplified this. Between you and Another great blogger I read, Kristen Wilson, i am really understanding this stuff. Two years ago I didn’t and depended upon our webmaster/coach to check everything or do it. Now we are good to go on our own. Love your little video. That was me two years ago.
Hi Roslyn, happy to hear you enjoyed the article and the Peanuts video! Kristen is an SEO all-star for sure. Small business owners can definitely take advantage of completing the basics of SEO to get greater reach and a higher ranking. How terrific that now you can do this on your own, love it!
Hi Meghan, I’m so glad you added Meta Descriptions. So many SEO gurus are saying they don’t help with search ranking, but SEO is first and foremost for people to understand what you have to offer; and your tailored Meta Description informs so much better than a random piece of copy that Google grabs from your article. Happy to meet a fellow SEO lover!
Hi Michelle! You’re so right…meta descriptions have been downplayed, which seems like a bad idea. As you mention, it’s an opportunity to convey your message, and who would want to waste that? I’ve seen the content that Google grabs when meta descriptions are absent, and it isn’t pretty! 😉 Thanks for your comments.
Thank you for this information ~ I printed it off and will be re-reading it.
Thanks, Krista, I hope it’s helpful later on when you have time to re-read it. It’s a decent guide to “the basics.”
Those are such important and easy things to do! And don’t forget that the Alt tags also make life easier for people who are vision impaired. Win-win for them and for us!
So true, Beth. We totally left out how some of the back end work helps the visually impaired. GREAT point, thanks!