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Stick to the basics of search engine optimization - SEO Lesson

November 17, 2008

Search engine optimization has only one objective – get traffic into your website. You can spend thousands of bucks and hundreds of hours for coming up with a gorgeous website, but if that site does not get visited, all your efforts will have been in vain. Here are a few basics on SEO.

1. Include your keyword in the title tag.

Search engines look at title tags in ranking a website. As such, you will want to have the keyword that best describes your site, your business, your products and services, into that title tag. If you can, you may use a different tag for each page of your site, but don’t overdo it. Having a long procession of all the keywords you can think of will not necessarily mean you automatically get into the search results of your potential customer or inquirer. Focus on relevance.

2. Be careful about links.

Whether it is an internal or an external one, again relevance is a major issue. Building a link or a series of it, the more the merrier, must make sure your keyword is included. If you have a different tag for every page, and the keyword conveys the essence of that page, then your link will already consider what a site visitor will most likely see in your site or specific page. So you links’ anchor texts must consider your keywords.

Analyze the links for their relevance and connection to your site’s features, your business, your products and services. Whether these are inbound links pointing to your site or outbound ones you recommend, make sure the online visitor will not feel he or she wasted time in exploring the links. The links’ subjects must be related or complementary to those of yours.

3. If you’re new, prove your worth.

The age of your site sometimes determine SEO. More mature and established ones have been there longer and have made a track record of traffic. Plus they know the secrets already. If your site is relatively new, you need to work harder on getting that traffic in through SEO by managing the basics. Your public relations with your peers in the industry will also play a role in establishing that online track record. As you prove your worth in actual business practice, more and more network colleagues, industry peers, even possible competitors will be noticing if not even linking to your site.

4. Don’t just copy and paste.

Try to avoid if not actually eliminate duplicate content in your site. Replicating the contents of the about page in the products and services page limits not only your creativity but the possibility of traffic. More importantly, don’t plagiarize.

5. Keep it simple.

Your site’s visitor will have a very short and impatient attention span. While you may have come up with the most relevant keywords, if there is not enough substance on the pages, no visitor will stay. Be brief, direct to the point, and highlight how you or your site is the answer to the visitor’s quest.

Stick to the basics of SEO and watch that traffic grow.

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