Search Engine Optimization is Not Black Magic

Written By: Elizabeth Wesson

Search engine optimization is not black magic. It is essential. It is basic. It is not about tricking people into finding your website; it is about driving quality traffic to your site. SEO is not a secret, nor a collection of secretive practices.  SEO consists of crafting/revising quality content and solid link building, so your site appears in web visitors' search results as much as possible. SEO is a principle that can yield amazing results if implemented correctly.

1. Monitor where you stand – You won’t know if your SEO efforts are working unless you monitor your search standing.  Before starting a campaign you should create a benchmark for where you currently stand. Then you should use a tool such as Google Analytics to track where your visitors are coming from and the keywords they are using to search for your site.
2. Keyword Density – Keywords should be placed appropriately throughout your site. They should be placed in your site’s title, meta tags, headings, content, URLs, and image descriptions. You can use a keyword generating tool like Google AdWords: Keyword Tool to find the right keywords to use when writing content for your site.
3. Content – Keyword rich content needs be fresh and updated regularly
4. Image descriptions – Spiders cannot decipher what an image is or the text that might be in your image. Use keyword-rich text for the “Alt” tag of your image. Another good practice is adding captions under your image to increase keyword density.
5. Create a site map – Adding a site map makes it easier for spiders to crawl/search your site.
6. Search friendly URLs – Use keywords when naming your URLs.
7. Social bookmarking – Make it easy for your visitors to social bookmark your website. Allowing web visitors to bookmark your site creates important links that the search engines value. There are plenty of free social bookmarking widgets available. ShareThis and AddThis are two social bookmarking services available.
8. Social media – Social media platforms like: Twitter, Facebook, and a company blog or newsletter should be used to distribute links to fresh content on your site.
9. Link back to yourself – Integrating internal links throughout your site is the easiest way to increase traffic to individual pages. Using one of your keywords as the linking term is a SEO best practice.
10. Link to others – The easiest way to increase the number of links to your site is to ask a well-respected site if they would include a link to your site on theirs. Be sure to return the favor and link to their site.