Everyone knows it is important to have good small business SEO (search engine optimization), and to rank higher on Google. But, all the SEO buzz can be so confusing, conflicting, and down-right annoying. So, let’s get rid of the fluff and get to the bottom of the most important SEO changes that you can make for your website.
- Essential web page elements.
- Helpful, updated content.
- Links to your site from other websites.
- Speed and mobile friendliness.
In this article we’ll be taking a closer look at the first SEO booster (the rest will be covered in other posts). Before we do, it’s important to have reasonable expectations about your search ranking. It’s also important to understand what you want to accomplish with SEO changes.
First, we have to remember that the world wide web is world wide. In a way you are competing with every other website out there. So, it isn’t reasonable to expect when people type “toy store” into the Google search box that your retail toy shop will come up first. But, you can rank highly in other ways, such as locally. For example, if your toy store was in Springfield, Missouri, then you can improve your ranking for searches like “toy stores in Springfield, MO.”
The goal in your SEO strategy is to find the keywords that matter most to your business, and that give you an opportunity to make a dent in rankings. It is possible, with some planning and research, to boost your website to the first page of Google for many relevant keywords, and these four strategies will get you on the right track.
Essential SEO web page elements
Your Google ranking is largely determined by keywords – the words people type in when they search. Google computer programs that scour the internet for pages, called “bots,” have to be able to find those keywords on your website. Of course they can find it in the text of your pages. But, there are certain elements on a page that the bots look for first, and that Google (and other search engines) give priority to.
These elements are denoted on web pages with html code. If you’re not fluent in html code, that’s ok. Getting to know these few html elements, though, will go a long way keeping your pages optimized for search. Also, many website content managers, such as WordPress, have built-in or add-on resources (such as the Yoast Plug-in for WordPress) that allow you to edit these elements easily with input boxes so you can forget about the technical stuff.
WHAT SEO TAGS TO PAY ATTENTION TO:
- H1 (<h1>Headline text here</h1>) – “H1” stands for “Headline 1” and it is the main visible title in the body of your web page. You should have one and only one H1 per page, and the text in it should describe the page well. Technically it can be as long as you want. But, for the sake of your users, keep it short and to the point. If it is a page about your bakery’s fresh cookies and cupcakes, then call it “Fresh Cookies and Cupcakes.”
- Title (<title>Page title</title>) – The text in the title tag is the title that users see when your page comes up on Google. This tag is located near the very top of your web page code, in the <head></head> section. It could be the same as, or a variation of, your H1, but should also include your company name. Adding your city and state or other locale info could help as well – e.g. Fresh Cookies and Cupcakes in Springfield, Missouri | Bob’s Bakery. The tile should be no longer than 60 characters. Anything more may get chopped off at the end.
- Description (<meta name=”description” content=”Description text”>) – The description is a summary of the page (obviously). This tag is usually located near the title tag. When your page result loads up on the Google search list, this is the smaller, summary text under the title. This description should definitely contain your most important keywords. But it still must accurately summarize the page. Ideally it would make someone searching on Google say, “That looks interesting, I want to know more.”
- Image Alt Tags (<img alt=”Image alternate text” src=”…” />) – “Alt” is short for “alternate” and is the text that gets displayed if an image file is missing, or in accessibility situations, such as screen readers for the blind. The important thing to know here is that Google and other search engines can’t tell what your images are unless you tell them with alt tags. Think of alt tags as your images in text form. They should be descriptive of the image, but could also be a good place to put keywords as long as your alt tag description remains useful as an image description. Don’t pack your alt tags full of unreadable keywords.
WHAT SEO TAGS NOT TO PAY ATTENTION TO:
- Keywords tag (<meta name=”keywords” content=”key, word, keyword”>) – The keywords tag has no bearing on search results. In fact, many SEO companies recommend not using it at all. It allows your competitors to see your keyword strategy. Many SEO plugins and tools still have this as a box to fill in, but just ignore it. It isn’t worth the time.
So, these three elements, H1, title, and description, are extremely important for good SEO. Make sure all your web pages have them. Also make sure that the text content for each is relevant to your pages and your keyword strategy. If you have a blog, get a plugin that allows you to set these elements for every post. If you have a website developer, and you find pages without these elements let him or her know so they can get them fixed as soon as possible.
As I mentioned in the recommendations above, it’s not enough just to have these elements. They should be optimized with the right amount of text, and include the right keywords. You don’t want to just fill them up with keywords, either, though. Remember that website users will see this text. Make sure it makes sense, and is enticing.
Be on the lookout for our next article in the series about the importance of helpful, updated content.
