SEO BASICS
Let’s start at the very beginning, and very simple. First disclaimers….
- Basics means basics, but advanced SEO will be useless without it
- I’m successful at reaching my own SEO goals, but I’m also reasonable. If there are 3,000,000 results for my targeted keyphrase(s) I don’t expect to get onto the first page of results in a couple of months. So… what I call successful you may feel is not successful.
- Unrealistic goals can lead you to failure
- Try anything here at your own risk, I offer no guarantees except that I believe in everything I post
Here are what I consider the base elements, from which all successful SEO begins. First, determine good keyphrase(s) you want your website to target. Check the search engine or search engines you want to target to see how many results you get for your chosen keyphrase(s). The more results you see, the more competition you have. At this point determine if you want less competition by choosing an alternative that has fewer results or maybe you want to go ahead and brave it. Say you want to sell balloons on your website. Google shows about 1,270,000 results for the search term balloons. Lots of competition, so maybe try balloons online and Google shows only about 243,000 results - still a lot, but far less. Okay, so now you have a primary keyphrase, also check another related term like buy balloons and Google shows about 251,000 results. That’s good for a secondary keyphrase, so let’s move onto coding.
CODING FOR GOOD SEO
Next, be sure you use valid code - HTML, XHTML, whatever. Now onto the elements on your pages you need to tie together, make sure your keyphrases appear throughout these places. From top to bottom the important basic elements of SEO are:
- the HTML Title tag: <title>Your Webpage Title</title>
- META description: <meta name=”description” content=”a description of the page where the description tag appears, a different one for each webpage.”>
- Header tag: <h1>Your Webpage Title</h1>
- Other headers: <h2> thru <h6>, be sure to use these using proper HTML/outline format to get the most
- Paragraph text, your content. Bold counts more than not bold, italicized **might** count more than no italicized, but less than bold text. Generally speaking the larger the text the more it counts.
Okay now we’ve got a list of the basic elements, now let’s talk about them a little bit. The more important keywords and keyphrases should appear as close to the beginning of these elements as is possible. However, don’t load your page up with a bunch of keywords and keyphrases to the point that visitors that reach your page are confused.
Tie your elements together by using your keyphrases throughout these different tags on your site. Considering balloons online is your primary and buy balloons is secondary you might end up with something like this (note: this is not meant to be a complete HTML document, and creativity is lacking in the examples below):
<title>Balloons Online - Click through and buy balloons</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”If you are looking for balloons online then you have found one of the Internet’s best places to buy balloons.”>
<h1>Ballons Online</h1>
<p>You have found the <strong>Ballons online</strong> website where you can <strong>buy balloons</strong> at a reasonable price and have them delivered. No need to pick them up and you can choose from our 1 million balloon, a must at any party! If you want to buy balloons online then you have found one of the best places on the Internet to do it.</p>
<p>Check out our balloon packages on the left and buy balloons until your heart’s content. Or check the Balloons on Sale button and see how much you can get for your money by taking advantage of our specials.</p>
Now, to contrast here is a bad example using the same elements and keyphrases:
<title>Balloons Online, buy balloons on our balloons online store, built especially to help you buy balloons</title>
<meta name=”description” content=”Balloons online, buy balloons, buy balloons online, your online balloon home, your home for balloons online”>
<h1>Balloons Online</h1>
<p><big><big><font size=”1″>Balloons online</big></big>, <strong>buy balloons, buy balloons online,</srong> your <em>online balloon home</font></em>, <strong>your home for balloons online.</strong> </p>
<p><font color=”#ff0000″>Buy balloons online this is your buy balloons online store,</strong> where you can buy balloons online for great balloon prices using a great balloon online store! </p></font>
In the example above the HTML is invalid (invalid tag nesting of the <font> tags), use of the out-of-date font tag, and the tags are littered with the keyphrases rendering the page hard to use for humans. Some search engines *might* be tricked by this keyword rich page, but as time goes by search engine algorithms get smarter and smarter and even if it works today it might not work tomorrow. What’s worse is when and if humans do get to your page you’ve made it difficult for them to do what they want, buy balloons!
Balance your need for SEO and what your visitors see. Never lose site of the fact that your goal is visitors visting your pages, and so they need to be easily read by live people, not just search engines.