For those that don’t know what SEO means, Search Engine Optimization is the process of getting your site ranked for those specific keywords or keyword phrases you are targeting.
If you are new to this process, there are three basic principles that you should follow to insure your site is being listed. This is assuming your site was built correctly to ideal Google specifications.
Follow the three steps below and watch your site rise on the search engines.
1. Acquire as many one-way inbound links as possible
An inbound link is any link to your website from another. It is effectively a vote of confidence in the eyes of Google. The key here is to get as many different sites as possible to link to your site using your specific targeted keyword. Ideally, these are high page rank sites as well. Be careful to not get involved with mass linking strategies or link farms, you run the risk of being de-listed by Google.
In our case, this would be something like “Kelowna web design” or “Calgary internet marketing”. When Google sees that a number of sites are linking to yours using a specific keyword phrase, it then begins to recognize your site as a leader for that particular phrase.
A very good example of this is the keyword phrase “click here”. Can you guess which site Google returns as the number 1 site in its results? I’ll tell you… it is the Adobe Acrobat reader page. The reason for this is, many millions of sites link to this page by saying something like, “click here to download the Acrobat reader”. It has achieved the number one ranking not because of any content it has optimized on this page, but because of the mass of inbound links.
2. Use the keywords you are targeting in the page Title tags.
Although not as important as inbound links, inserting your targeted keyword phrase into the title tag will help your search engine ranking.
You do this by using the <title></title> tag within your site.
In our case, the title tag we use for our home page is:
<title>Calgary web design Kelowna, internet marketing & SEO | ecentric</title>
It should read as naturally as possible, but should attempt to use your main targeted keywords. In our case, these are: Calgary, Kelowna, Web Design, Internet Marketing and SEO. It isn’t usually necessary to optimize your site for your company name, because your potential target customer does not search for your company name, they search the product or service they are looking for.
3. Optimize the page content for your specific keywords.
This is the least important factor compared to the others above when it comes to ranking your site on Google. There is a sweet spot when it comes to getting your keywords on the page. Don’t overdo this or Google can perceive your site as being guilty of keyword stuffing. Not to mention, it can look completely obvious to the viewers of your site.
Be sure to use the H1 tag as close to the top of the page as possible. This is essentially a main heading on the page. Google looks to these as quick indicators as to what this specific page content is about.
To summarize, if you want to rank well in Google, you have to:
1. Get as many targeted one-way inbound links as possible
2. Use targeted keywords in your page title tags.
3. Make sure that the keywords and keyword phrases you are targeting are mentioned in the body content of your site.
This is a very simple overview of a process that can certainly be more complex. This typically depends on how competitive the market is for your specific keyword phrases.
If you need help optimizing your site for success on Google, please give us a call for a free consultation.
