CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, July 30, 2010
/24-7PressRelease/ -- I was recently invited to speak at an event orchestrated to give small business owners an overview of the e-marketing landscape. I thought I'd go in, give an overview of SEO, and provide some practical SEO tips for those delegates who possibly didn't have the budget for a full-blown campaign.
I was met with a few blank stares, which made me realise that a lot of SEO still goes over the heads of most people. That's not to say that they don't know what it is, and most people these days certainly grasp its benefits. What they don't understand is "the how".
Keyword research and careful keyword allocation remain the cornerstone of a solid SEO strategy. But that aside, what are the technical considerations that you should look at, on page, to ensure that your content performs as well as it should on the search engines?
- Make sure it's accessible
If search engine spiders can't reach your content, they can't index it. One of the most common problems I see is that sites restrict spiders' access through their robots.txt file, restrictive navigation or the use of elements like iframes and Flash.
- Get your meta-data right
We know that Google doesn't consider the meta-keyword tag any longer, as it had been so widely abused in the past.
However, the title tag is still one of the most important elements on a page. It can also play an important role in click-through rates, as it is the blue link text which is displayed on the search engine results pages (SERPs). It's important to include your main key-phrases here and to customise this tag for each page.
An equally important element, the meta-description, is often used as the snippet on the SERPs. This should include relevant key-phrases, describe the page and entice users to click-through.
- Use proper headings
Headings give your page structure and, if these are marked up correctly, they give search engines a good indication of your page's hierarchy.
- Use descriptive URLs
URLs should contain keywords. If your site is data-base driven, you could utilise something like a mod_rewrite to convert your URLs into user and search engine-friendly addresses.
It's also worth employing a directory structure that orders your content in a hierarchical and logical way.
- Link properly
Linking appropriately to your landing pages with the correct keyword-rich anchor text (link text between the _a href_ tags) not only provides a useful point of entry for your human users but also shows search engines which pages on your site are the most important and what they're about.
- SEO made easy
The good news is that if you use a platform like WordPress for your site or blog, it already takes care of most of SEO's technical considerations for you. There are several plug-ins or widgets that you can use to rewrite URLs, to insert custom meta-data and to format headings.
Generally the CSS and the mark-up of WordPress templates is standards- compliant and very accessible, so you don't need to worry about whether your content is crawlable or not.
Of course, the content is still up to you. You will need to evaluate the keywords you choose to use, monitor your progress in analytics and use this data to make informed decisions about changes to your site.
AlterSage, a full service online marketing agency, offers tailored online marketing solutions that achieve targeted exposure for your website. Goal focussed and driven by return on investment, services include search engine optimisation, pay per click advertising, web design and development, persuasive web copywriting, brand building, conversion analysis and many more.
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