SEO Basics

To delve a little deeper into Britt’s SEO 101: Most Important Factors for Higher Organic Rankings post, here’s a look at simple tags and code you can implement that focus on your chosen keywords. These easy, beginner practices will help launch your quest to number one.

First of all, let’s recap. What is Search Engine Optimization? It is the practice of promoting a web site in order to increase the amount of visitors the site receives from search engines. Through optimization, your website becomes easier for search engines AND visitors to understand. Below, we outline the basic of the basic practices you should implement in your website. Title Tags—

What is a title tag? It defines the title of a page.

It is best to keep the tag under 70 characters. Anything over this amount gets cut off by Google.
The closer the most important keyword is to the front of the tag, the more likely a user will click in their searches and the better the ranking.
How to write a title tag:

Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
Brand Name | Primary and Secondary Keyword

<head> <title>example of title tag</title> </head> Meta Descriptions—

What is a meta description? It’s a small snippet explaining the content of the page.
Meta descriptions don’t affect your search rankings, BUT they are very important in the user click-through rate (CTR).
Make the copy as relevant and persuasive as possible to drive traffic.
Keep the description to 150-160 characters. Google shortens anything longer than this.

<head> <meta name="description" content="This is what will show up in a search."> </head> Anchor Text—

What is anchor text? It is the text you see in a hyperlink.

For example: TargetClick Marketing home page

Search engines use the text to define the subject of the linked page.
If many links point to a particular page with the right keywords in their anchor text, the page has a chance of ranking well.
Important note: if there are two links on a page directing to the same URL, Google will only recognize the anchor text used in the first link.

<a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com ">Text shown on page </a>

URLs—

What is a URL? A Uniform Resource Locator, it is the text that replaces the IP addresses that computers use to communicate with servers.

For example: http://www.targetclickmarketing.com

It is best to keep the URL relevant and somewhat short. Nobody likes a URL that’s 300 characters.
Use hyphens to separate words, not underscores, spaces, or other characters.

Take a look at this graphic from SEOmoz:

Good:

Bad:

Alt Text— • What is alt text? It is short text attached to an image. • Google spiders only crawl text, not pictures. • If the page you want to rank is heavily image based rather than text, without the Alt tag, it will be difficult to rank. • You can change this usually under the image settings. <img src="http://www.example.com/example.png" alt="Keyword">

By including these five basic SEO tactics, your site will begin its journey in finding that coveted number one ranking. Note though, these are only the basics. There are other more intensive practices that should be implemented once a new SEOer becomes a little more experienced.

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