The basics of SEO

So you want to improve your site’s ranking in the major search engines but don’t understand the complexities of how it all works?

For anyone serious about really boosting their ranking, help from a professional agency is the best solution.

But if you’re looking for a few ideas on how to get started, below is a summarised version of Andy Beal’s guide to making your site more search engine friendly.

1. Do some research on the most requested keywords for your industry. Make sure you’ve used them in your title and meta tags - but most importantly, make sure you use them in the page content.

2. Aim to have should at least 250 words of text to show you have some useful content on offer. Within that text, try to include keywords as about 5-15% of the total text.
3. If exact phrases of keywords are not appropriate, try to at least keep key terms at close proximity. Most search engine technology analyses words located close to a search term to determine the context in which it is being used.
4. Consider having keywords located in your navigation bar if they are describing links to appropriate pages within your site.
5. Try not to have your text in flash or image formats, as robotic webcrawlers often cannot read the text contained in pictures.
6. Use separate pages with individual URLs rather than frames.
7. Don’t bury your keyword-rich content at the bottom of the page. Search engines consider where the text is located on a page when determining your site’s relevancy.
8. Don’t overdo things. While having no search terms in your text is disastrous, having too many could have an equally negative impact. Stick to your 5-15% frequency.
9. Remember the user experience. While your SEO efforts will help improve your search engine rankings, don’t sacrifice the usability of your web site.
10. Avoid excessive use of “H1″ tags or bold text. While they can help improve your search engine positioning, less is more.

Obviously there are a myriad of possibilities for further improving the ranking of your site - but it’s important to have a grasp of the basic principles before moving onto more complex techniques.