SEO 101 – Optimizing Your Website

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The first step to SEO is to select a page title for your website. The title of your page should only include your PRIMARY keyword phrase (the main keyword that you want to optimize). For example, if you were building a website or blog that was focused on "101 Ways to Healthy Eating", that should be the title of your page. Do not change it up or add additional keywords to it. Use the title of your page to hone in on the exact keyword phrase that you want to optimize and nothing else. Remember, every keyword has to be optimized separately, meaning that if you have done your homework, checked WordTracker for a specific keyword (or keyword phrase), checked out the competition on Google, etc etc .. and you decided to that the specific keyword phrase you searched for will work for you, that is what you need to use. Even changing or adding a single keyword means going back to the drawing board and re-researching that phrase from scratch.

SEO sucks, I know – but it's an important process if you want to rank higher in the engines and in turn, garner more traffic to your website.

The next step is to create a heading for your page, which is the first thing your visitors see when they land on your website. Some webmasters like to use header graphics and if you are one of them, be sure to include your keyword in the 'alt' tag, otherwise if you are using a textual header, be sure that you use the

<h1> </ h1> tag.

Here's an example:
Code:

This is your header

Another tip is to keep your

<h1> </ h1> tag to the left of your page if possible. The logic behind this is that the Google bots (spiders) that visible your website read from left to right. It's known that having your <h1> </ h1> tag too far on the right alignment can actually hurt your SEO ranking. The only exception to the way the bots will read your website is if you have links in a left aligned navigation menu. In this case, the Google bots will then read the links down the left hand side column before it further explores your page.

You will also want to add a sub-header to your page, but for sub headers, you should use the

<h2> </ h2> tag instead (this makes your text a bit smaller than your header tag).

A sub header is the line underneath your header.

Example:

Code:

This is your header

This is your sub-header text

So, for a website focusing on 101 Ways To Healthy Eating may use a sub header (sub title), such as: "Healthy Eating Techniques That Work". Regardless of what you decide to use, be sure that you also use your primary keyword (the main term / phrase you are optimizing) included in your sub title as well.

Keyword Stuffing

Although you should always include your primary keyword (phrase) in your sub title as well as in your main title, one thing you want to avoid is what is referred to as Keyword Stuffing. This is simply listing your primary keywords repeatedly on your page. Search engines like Google will quickly detect this and your ranking may go down so be sure to sprinkle your keywords through your page but use common sense when doing so. An easy way to determine if you are over-using your keyword is to read it out loud.

Does it make sense to you?

Does it sound natural?

Is this how you would talk about it in public?

If it sounds similar to how you would talk about it in person, then you should do okay. If it is written in such a way that makes it difficult for an average person to read, it should be re-written. Pages created exclusively for the search engines do not do well, both in terms of your visitors clearly understand what you are trying to say and in the way search engines determine how to rank you.

There are many aspects to cover when doing your best SEO possible. Other methods including having your page indexed quickly by getting posted (linked) on similar / related websites with a high PR rank is just one of those techniques to explore. The most important thing however, is the initial steps you take when setting up your page. Be sure to include your title tag, a brief meta description, search keywords and long-tail keywords, explore your competitors pages, check the Page Rank of other similar sites, and on and on it goes.

Once you start to remember that SEO begins from the time you create your very first page, you will find it easier to rank higher in the search engines.