Roberto Blake 5 Secrets to SEO

Good on page SEO strategies come in all shapes and sizes, but these are proven.

#1 Keywords Are Key, How to Choose Them

It is  a colossal waste of time and effort to optimize your web site for keywords that are not even being searched on. You should invest your time and energy into finding the best keywords that are suited to the content you are providing. One of the most effective ways of doing this is using Google’s new beta offering Google Insights.

This tool allows you to look at the search volume, and rising search terms by category, region, country, and time. You can see what the rising keyword searches related to beauty and fashion (for example) were for the last 12 months, 3 months, 30 days, or even the last week, as well as what the current top 10 terms are. There are many other tools that you can use to help you determine what keywords you should be targeting but this is the one that I personally recommend. If you have a Google account it also lets you export this data for later use and convenience. Truth be told, in many cases you can determine this information by also running searches through the search engine of your choice and they will usually offer “related searches”.

Once you know what keywords you are going to be targeting, its not enough to include them in your keyword meta tags, they should be used “appropriately” within the content of the page. Keyword stuffing is something that marketers and SEO’s become entirely too tempted to do and it is a horrible practice that never helps the end user in anyway. The true goal of any SEO, web designer, or developer should be to create a positive experience for users in which their needs and/or desires are met.

#2 Optimize Your Page Title If You Want to Reach the Top

You should choose and appropriate title that will tell both users and search engines what your content is about. Just using the title “Home Page”, “Index”, “Blank”, or “Page 1″, does not tell a human being, or a search engine, anything useful about the page or the information they can expect to find by going there. If you can help it I recommend keeping it under 60-80 characters as some search engines or directors cut them off at that point.

If you really want a listing to be on the first page of the search engine  results, you must include your keywords in your title tag. If at all possible, before any other words in the title, provided the context still makes sense. Repeating your keywords in the title, usually gets flagged as Spam, so try to avoid this when you can.

It also helps if your title represents a Call to Action, a statement that compels the user to do something, for example “Become A Famous Graphic Designer” may be and ideal title for a blog featuring advice on how to accomplish that particular goal. Call to Action statement are a great way to attract readers to click on your link, and Click Through Rates play a major roll in how search engines determine the relevance of your web site.

#3 Using Headings and  Boldness to Organize Content

Headings are very important for organizing information, its an old carry over from the first news papers and other print material and how as human recognize important information.  Be sure to include at least H1-H3 when assembling your page, and try to set them up appropriately in your style sheets.  Search engines like human beings notice this, and if you tie your keywords to your heading tags it helps the search engines understand how valuable or relevant the content of your site is to that particular keyword or phrase.

Bold tags also work in a similar fashion to a lesser degree, and may be used to highlight and important/relevant portion of content within a sentence or paragraph.

#4 Using ALT and Title Tags

The importance of web site accessibility is something that many web designers overlook. Part of the issue with this is that in addition to no taking a portion of your audience that may be disabled into account you’re not looking at the obvious advantages this gives you from a SEO perspective.

Computers and machines by nature are mostly “blind, and deaf”, when you think about it. The same accessibility issues and interaction that the handicapped would have with a web site, are the same barriers that a search engine or robot will have. Using the title attribute the direct method of telling the search engines about the relevance of the link. It’s also a  standard for making your page accessible to disabled people.

The alt attribute  is used for the same reasons as the title attribute, but is specifically for describing  images to the search engine and to the visually impaired.

#5 Naming Conventions

Human beings and search engines alike only know what you tell them. How do I know when I download an image from your site is a balloon if its file name is “galleryimage001.jgp”? I don’t, simple as that, and the search engine referencing and indexing images of balloons is certain to over look you as well. Naming your image “red-balloon-01.jpg” makes a lot more sense to the search engine, as well as the person who downloads your image without renaming the file.

This same logic applies to the directory structure of your web site. By naming your directories and page names in a logical way that utilizes your keywords, both search engines and human beings will have an easier time understanding, and navigating the content of your site. If your keyword is the title of your web page the file name, the alt and title tags of your links and images, as well as the content of your page, you’re well on your way to having all of your On Site SEO squared away.