Top SEO basics that we all forget sometimes
These are some basic SEO tips that we all forget sometimes. If possible work out your SEO strategy while the website is being built. Your website will need to integrate with the search engines as well as possible for people to find it – this means from a site architecture point of view as well as a content and linking strategy point of view.
Do not think only in terms of search engine spiders and algorithms. It is very easy to fall into this trap. Remember that the search engines goal is to provide people with the most relevant websites based on their keyword search – which means they are constantly engineering and gearing their algorithms to work out what people are actually looking for.
Do some good old fashioned keyword research using Google adwords or something like Seobook or Wordtracker. You want your webpages to be optimised for the correct keywords right from the start. Good keyword research can also help you with long tail traffic over time so you can get visitors using longer search strings.
Research your competitors – this goes hand in hand with keyword research. See who is top for the phrases you have identified then also look at what other phrases they are attacking to see what you might have missed.
Link research: as part of the competitor research look at who is linking to your competitors. You will find some good sources of links and you will also very possibly discover some tricks that your competitors are using to rank that you might also be able to take advantage of.
If you can; if it is useful to your visitors and if it makes sense without looking spammy then use a keyword rich domain name as this can help a little in the short-term. Work out what your main landing pages are going to be and optimise them and the links going to them. Your more important pages are the ones you want your visitors going to and they’re the ones that you want to convert. Make sure they load quickly.
Always use unique well-thought out titles, metadata and internal links based on all of the above points. These are your main weapons in on-site optimisation and the main things that you have influence over in your SEO efforts. Make sure they look attractive to human readers as well as the search engines as your title and your description are what show in the search engine results and what people read before deciding whether to click on your link or not.
Optimise your web pages’ loading times, slim down images, cut down multiple http requests by combining files and even use compression on your pages where possible. If you get visitors to your site you don’t want to lose them by leaving the page loading for too long (loading times are also seen as a sign of quality by Google).
Ignore keyword densities in favour of writing proper flowing language around your subject. Sure you need to get in some relevant phraseology alternative vocab and maybe stemming but make sure your copy reads well to a person. Where possible keep to one subject (or product etc) per page. You want the search engines to be in no doubt as to what the page is about. Search engines use programs to work out what pages are about – you need to make it as easy as possible for them to do this.
Use keyword rich urls throughout your website. This makes the url more attractive and understandable to people searching the web and can also get you some keyword rich inbound links from websites that just use the url as the anchor text of the link.
Webcentric web design Cambridge specialise in custom web design and search engine optimisation services for all business sizes and business sectors. Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/top-seo-basics-that-we-all-forget-sometimes-1627754.html
