Seo 101 : Lets start at the beginning

 

 

There are four basic benefits of SEO that are the foundation of the online success that it brings. In the end, what we are all looking for is more business. But in order to get that there are a few things that need to be dealt with as part of your optimization strategy.

Four basic benefits of SEO

Indexed pages

Before you can get your pages to rank for your targeted keyword phrases, you need to be sure that the search engines can first find them, and second decipher them. This goes back to making sure that you have a strong, search engine friendly website architecture. You do this by ensuring your links are properly navigable. The navigation of your site must have a properly established hierarchy, and your content needs to be readable. I'll touch on these things in more detail later in the series.

Rankings

This is what we all want SEO for, right? Actually, I hope not. We'll discuss the other two benefits which are far more important next, but while rankings are an important part of SEO, they are not the goal in and of themselves. Too many people look at rankings and think "I'm losing x amount of business because I'm not ranked #1. This may or may not be true. Different rankings produce different bounce rates. It's important to understand that rankings don't make sales, they just provide a way in the door, and those that come in at #1 may not be as ready to buy as those that come in at #5.

Visitors

Once you start getting rankings, even for low-volume but important keywords, you'll start to see your visitor count rise. Again, this is good, but not the ultimate goal you're trying to achieve unless you get paid on a cost per impression basis.

Conversions

This is the big goal. The end-all, be-all purpose of search engine optimization. SEO is more than just helping you get rankings and drive traffic to your site. It should also help you increase your conversion counts and percentages. A conversion can be anything you want it to be; a comment on your blog, a download of a white paper, a follow on twitter, or a purchase of a product. Its important to know what your conversions are so you can set your optimization goals to help achieve them.

 

Throughout the process of SEO it's important to keep in mind that the search engines, as smart and advanced as they are, are still pretty stupid. They can't tell the intent, so if intent is needed in order to determine relevance of a page or keyword, the search engines are unaware. Part of the SEO process is going out of your way to spell things out to the search engines so no guessing is needed.

Keep in mind visitors can also be pretty dumb themselves. Business owners are always complaining about calls they get asking for information that's clearly noted in the website. Of course, it's not that your visitors are really stupid, it's that they are impatient for things that are not easy. The harder your site is to navigate, find information, make a purchase or get that conversion, the more likely the visitor is to leave. They'll move on to another site where things are easy.

As we go through this SEO process we'll be looking at things that make your site easier to understand, navigate and process for both the search engines and the visitors. And while much of this information is "basic", it's these basics that still matter to the search engines.

Building Good Title Tags

 

The title tag is the single most important piece of SEO real estate on your site. A title tag can be as long as you want, but you only have about 63 characters before the search engines cut it off. So use it wisely.

Since the title appears as the clickable link in the SERPs pages it has to be able to meet a couple of different demands.

Keyword rich

Searchers type in specific words into the search engines and they expect the engines to provide results that match their original query. We know that the search engines look at over 200 different signals to determine the relevance of any page against the keyword searched. The title tag one of them, but a very key one at that. You don't necessarily need your keyword in the title tag for it to come up in the search results, but it helps a great deal.

 

But what about the visitor? What does the searcher see? Let say a searcher types "how to be beautiful" into the search engine and two results are displayed. One reads "How to Look Good and Feel Great" and another reads "How to Look Beautiful Even When you Don't Feel Like It." Which of these two is more likely to be clicked by the visitor?

It's entirely likely both pages address the same concerns, but only one uses the searched keyword. More than likely, the second result will get far more clicks than the first, even if it is in a lower position in the results (which isn't likely, but lets pretend anyway.)

Compelling

The next thing your title tag needs to be is compelling. We looked out how to make it more likely to be clicked simply by putting keywords in it, but that itself is only part of the issue. Going back to our example above if we put the first non-keyword using headline up against a third keyword rich headline of "Sexy and Beautiful, Today's Hottest Stars." which do you think will gain more clicks? My guess is the first one that doesn't use keywords because it is far more compelling and speaks more toward the searcher's intent. So in this situation the third headline is likely to rank higher but will receive fewer clicks.

The trick is to make sure that the title tag is both keyword rich and compelling. This will help move your site to the top of the rankings, but also ensure that visitors are more likely to click on it into your site.

Common mistakes

 

Implementing your title tags properly is crucial to ensuring they are effective. There are a number of easy mistakes that you can make if you don't take the time to do it right. It's easy to want to blast through your title tags, especially if you have a lot of pages. But because the title tag is so important, you want to take care in developing them properly. Here are a few common issues:

Same on Every Page: Each page in your site is unique, or at least it should be. This means your title tags should be unique on each page as well. On a lot of sites you'll see the same title tag across all the pages "Welcome to My Site, or something like that. That hardly describes the page at all. And show that in the search results, you're not likely to get any clicks. Go through the site and customize each title, ensuring it uniquely and accurately describes the content of the page.

Leading with Business Name: There are good reasons to have your business name present in your title tag, but that should not be by default. If you use your business name be sure to think through the reasoning and make sure it's sound. The limitations of the title tag make using your business name something you do only with great care and consideration. I'll discuss this more in a bit.

List of Keywords: Wanting to get your keywords in the title tag makes it tempting to just try to throw as many in there as you possible can. "Beauty | Makeup | Makeovers | Diet | Healthy Skin." Sure that gets all your keywords in there but does nothing to make someone want to click on the result. This means that (gasp!) you have to use keywords sparingly so you can also make the title something worth clicking on.

Lack of Description: Aside from getting your primary keywords in the title, and making it compelling, you also have to make sure the title tag provides enough of a description of the content to ensure it gets a targeted click. No sense having someone click into the site only to find the information on the page isn't what they expected. Make sure that the title describes the content in a compelling and keyword friendly way.

Branded titles

So let's address using your business name in your title tags. As I said earlier, sometimes its wise but that shouldn't be the default position.

In general, you can place your business name either at the front or the rear of the title tag. My rule of thumb is that you don't want to put your business name at the front of your title tag unless you have a highly recognizable brand name that the visitor will know and will likely be a click-generator from the search results. If that's not the case then you simply don't want to give up that real estate.

Branding at the rear of the title tag is a far better solution for most businesses. This helps moderately known or even unknown companies build brand name recognition. The downside of branding your title tags this way is you are still using up valuable real estate that might otherwise be used making a keyword rich and compelling headline. Also note, that if the title goes too long, your business name will be cut off in the search results.

Most of the time you don't need your business name in your title tags at all, however there is one time when I would suggest leaving it off almost 90% of the time. This is on product pages. It's so crucial to get important product data into the title tag that there often simply isn't room enough for your business name. Again, I might make an exception for well-known business names, but default to showing product info first and foremost.