SEO Fundamentals

On-Site SEO Factors

The Value of Content & SEO

Research
Keyword research is important.  A few have said SEO keywords are no long a factor … this is simply not the case. Do not spend time on anything until you first know what phrases is related to the subject. Small mistakes here can have a big impact on the success of your online store, site or business.

High Quality Content is KING
Always have fresh high quality content. There must be a reason for anyone to visit your site. If you have something relevant to say, based on keywords or key phrases the searcher is looking for you will rank higher in the search engines, for these phrases or keywords.

Bounce Rates Can Really Hurt
will a visitors stay on your site or bounce and leave, quickly? If your site is viewed by Google or the other search engines as being unable to keep visitors involved then it will be pushed down in search. Pay critical attention to your bounce rate; fix it when you notice downward trend or low visitor time duration.

Content is still KING in all SEO
Fresh content is paramount for good SEO! The last thing a search engine wants to show a visitor is an outdated stale or boring site. Content is not only king, it is vital to your success. You must have something relevant to say, it must also be realeven to key words or search phrases requested by the surfer. Always update and keep it fresh, blogging is a great way to achieve this important goal.

HTML & other SEO Factors

H1 and heading tags
Use H1, H2 and H3 HTML heading tags. The search engines look for these. The tags add extra SEO weight and to use them also makes reading easier. These are very important, never cut and paste content. You must always manually make sure the “H” tags are in place, and never expect them to flow over from another page or its content.

Meta Descriptions for better SEO
Use a HTML description tag efficiently. Do not make it too short or too long. Less than50 characters but never more than160 characters (including spaces). Begin with the most important keywords or phrases. It is also very helpful to insert important sentences from the site. Always use a unique description tag.

Ease of Crawl
Ensure that your site can be crawled properly by the search engines. Use a well-designed internal linking structure. Make it easy for Google and others to crawl the site. If they miss pages altogether or it takes too long to crawl, all of the site will be punished. In general make it easy for the search engines to work with your site and you will be pleased by the result.

Load Time will improve SEO
Make sure you create a pleasant visitor experience and optimize your pages for quick load or refresh times. This will have several important effects. First, If the search engines have to wait for a long time to load so that they cannot crawl it efficiently, the will see fewer pages each visit. Secondly, if the search engines believe that the page loads to slowly they will penalize that page for its slow loading decreases its value or impact.

URLs and Keywords
The URLs should be keyword related whenever possible. There should be a preferred URL for every page. If your site has multiple paths to get the same content then you need to fix this by using canonical URLs.  At the least this will avoid any confusion. In some cases, the search engines may not display anything deemed a duplicate content or page.

Off-Site SEO Factors

Linking Quality makes SEO easy
Always and only get HIGH quality links. This means text links instead of image only links. Always use text with keywords and  keyword phrases that relate to the page. Also, the text link should be from a paragraph that also relates to the page receiving the link. Preferably get links from authoritative dominate website. Also make advantage of links that are made with generic phrases such as “click here”, “learn more”, “visit website” or even your company name or company URL. Some consider thirty percent of generic links to be the right number.

Link Quality and Velocity affect SEO
Only add links at a natural or human engaged rate. A large number of links added within a short time always raise a red flag. In general the rate at which you gain links should match the rate at which you add new, high-quality compelling content. This also helps force you to maintain high quality fresh content. The higher quality links added to your site the better. Every link is a “vote in favor of your site” and it’s content. If no one links to you the content on your site has no value. On the other hand, if many other websites like you, or “vote for you” your content is good and worth linking. The more links you can acquire the better the ranking position will be.

Trickery get you nothing for SEO
Don’t keyword stuff.  Stuffing keywords into your tags or descriptions and page content will get your pages flagged. Using a text font color that is the same as the page background color can be a sure way to lose search position, when you get caught, and you will get caught. If your SEO company does this, fire them right now! Link spamming is when you comment on blogs and in forums and then create a links back to your site just for the sake of building links. Do too much of this and you will be punished.

 

Conclusion:

The best way to achieve high SEO ranking and credibility is to have quality content, keywords and keyword phrases that are relevant. Appropriate use of Meta descriptions and tags are important. If you try tricking Google or other search engines you will eventually get caught and be penalized! Make it good, make it right, make it relevant, and we all win. SEO and keywords really matter.

For more tips on good SEO check back often.