SEO for Beginners

Ahh…the big SEO.  For beginners it’s sometimes hard to grasp.  I mean…if you build it, they will come, right?

Wrong!

When you’re building a website it’s more likely that it’ll get lost in the billions and billions of  web pages out there.

So that’s why SEO (search engine optimization) is so vital to your site if you want it to get found.  If you need to make money from your website, you’ll go broke without proper SEO.

And it always amazes me when I hit websites with little to no SEO happening.  So if you’re new to optimizing your website, here are a few basics to get you started:

Title Tags

Look up at the blue bar at the top of the website.  It’s got some keywords up there.  Those keywords have been selected to optimize the Title Tag.  A lot of websites put the company name in this place.  Big mistake.

See, people who are searching for your product or service don’t search for your business name…they enter related keywords.  For example: One of the keywords I optimize for is, SEO Copywriter.  So when people search for that term, my website will pop up in Google.

And oh, by the way…the Title Tag is weighed very heavily by search engines.  Especially Google so don’t neglect this part.  If you’re handy with HTML, you can go into your source code and find <title>  </title> and put your keywords right in between.

Make sure to put keywords relative to the content on the page.  And don’t blindly repeat the same keywords on every page.

Description
This is where you write a description about the web page.  And this is the blurb that shows when your listing is viewed on a search engine.  If you can, use a keyword or two.  But make it persuasive as well.  It’s part of what’ll entice people to click on your listing.

Also, don’t write the same description for each page.  Make if different but relative to the page’s content.  If you repeat the same keywords and description for each page, Google will start to only show your homepage.
Meta Tags
This is where you insert your long list of keywords.  Some people say they’re irrelevant now and others say they are.  All I know is it takes a few seconds to insert them

I mean, what the heck, right?  It can’t hurt and it might help.
H Tags
These are the H1, H2, H3, etc headings that you assign to text.  For instance, the title of this article is SEO for Beginners.  I would make that an H1 tag.  This weighs the importance of phrases for the search engine robot.  It helps them pick out what counts.

Since I do  SEO copywriting, I always try to write headlines and subheadlines to break up the copy.  This makes it easy for people to scan and I can assign H tags to them as well.
Alt Tags
These are for images on your website.  Since search engine robots don’t recognize images, the description in the alt tag gives them something to read.  It’s just another place to strategically insert your keywords.  Just make sure they’re relevant to the image.

Content
In the copywriting world, content is king.  And Google definitely rewards for relevant content that is updated regularly.  And really, people will enjoy your website so much more if there is good stuff for them to read.

When writing copy for websites, I try to weave in a 3%-4% keyword density.  This way I’m writing for the robots as well.  Just don’t try to stuff as many keywords in as you can.  The all knowing robots will spot your tricks in a second and actually penalize you for it (is anyone else a little creeped out by how smart these search engine robots are getting?).

Anyway, if you actually implement all of the above items, you’ll be ahead of the pack.  But stick around because the one sure thing about SEO is the rules are bound to change!

Evy Schwartz
SEO Expert
San Antonio, Texas

Tagged with: alt tags • beginners • meta tags • seo

Filed under: Uncategorized

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!