Top SEO Tips for Business

By Jonathan Camp

This post concentrates on Top SEO Tips for business to make sure that your onpage and offpage SEO is complete. These techniques will ensure that you are doing the right things with the search engines and Google. Before you start any complicated SEO techniques you should ensure that all the items in this post have been completed for each page on your website. Google ranks relevancy to the search term entered by the user on the search page. Your web page or blog post should talk about the subject searched for and ensure you answer their question, completely and accurately with good relevance to their query.

OnPage Search Engine Optimisation relates to those elements that you can do to rank your website within the search engines, by using elements contained ‘within’ your webpages. The on and offpage optimisation techniques form part of the much larger SEO Strategy that all websites should outline in order to rank well within the search engines. Before you start optimising your web pages for keywords and your onpage strategy you should also complete a full competitor analysis to see how your competitors are placing bettter than you with the search engine results pages.

Typical OnPage Search Engine Optimisation tactics

• Homepage Optimization
• Keyword Phrase Optimization
• Fixing the text links
• Image Optimization
• Keyword Research
• Header Tags Optimization
• Title Tag Optimization
• Meta Tag Optimization
• Alt Tag Optimization
• Anchor Tag Optimization
• Meta tags placement
• HTML Sitemap Creation
• XML Sitemap Creation
• Meta Tags Placements
• Suggestions on Content Optimization
• Complete Image Optimization
• Traffic Tracking Codes
• Remove Spam links
• Google Sitemap
• Optimization of textual content of your Home Page and key inner pages with keyword placement within content
• Creation of Internal Linking Network

OffPage Optimisation tactics include

OffPage Search Engine Optimisation are the things you to drive traffic to your website. Typically this consists of exercises in Search Engine Ranking, Google Local Listings, Forum Backlink Posting, etc.

• Manual Search Engine Submission
• Manual Relevant Directory Submission
• Local / Niche Directory Submission
• Google Local Listing
• Link Exchange (One Way + Reciprocal)
• Three way linking (Text links)
• Social Bookmarking & Community Advertising
• Article Submission / Article Marketing
• Press Release Submission
• Blog Commenting
• Blog Creation, updating and promotion
• Web 2.0 pages
• Forum posting
• Classified ads Creation & Posting
• RSS feed submission
• Blog Directory Submission
• Google Groups
• Video Submissions
• Yahoo! Answers
• Social Media Promotion
• Profile Promotion
• You tube Page Promotion
• Face Book, Linkedin, Twitter & My Space Promotion.

OnPage Tips for ranking well within the Search Engines

ONPAGE SEO Tips for the Title Tag

• Don’t repeat the same word in the title multiple times.
• The title of the page is the most important ranking criteria for search engines. Take care to place your keywords at the start of the title tag.
• Don’t create titles entirely in UPPERCASE letters, but having some text in capitals – especially where they are your keywords – is often useful.
• You can code accentuated letters in HTML (é = é).
• Your page title must be 7 to 10 words long and must contain important and descriptive words – anything over 7 to 10 words will be truncated on the search engine results page.
• Avoid titles like: “Homepage”, “Welcome on our web site”. They make indexing your content very difficult and are not rich with keywords.
• Every page of your site must have its own title, the title is perhaps the most important tag on your page and should be optimised.
• Of course, every page of your site must have a title… the title must relate to the first H1 tag and the content in order to be indexed effectively
• Avoid the lists of words separated by commas: create sentences that have a meaning when read
• Don’t begin your title by a space – it’s just a waste
• HTML code for your title tag: <title>Your title</title>
• In the HTML code, place the title as high as possible (close to the <HEAD> tag). This save the indexing bots having to search around for the title tag and gives your page relevance.

ONPAGE SEO Tips for META Description Tag

• The “Meta Description” tags are less important for search engines, but useful for people when looking at the search engine results pages – the first two lines (approx.) of the description is shown, and should be keyword enhanced to match the potential expressions typed into the search – matching words will automatically be in bold.
• The “Meta Description” tags are used by search engines, but not so much by the directories.
• HTML code for the description tag: <meta name=”description” content=”your textual description of your pages content…”>
• The Meta “Description” tag should be placed as high as possible in the HTML code – usually it follows the Title Tag
• You can code accentuated letters in HTML (&eacute; = é).
• “Meta Description” tag should have between 150 and 200 characters.
• The description tag is normally an enhancement to the Title Tag and used so that people can understand what your page is discussing. It should be a real sentence but rich with keywords – the keywords should relate to the title and the first H1 tag on your page.
• The “Meta Description” tags should be different for each page. However, because of their decreasing importance, you can divide your site in “categories” (“Products”, “About the company”, “News”…).

ONPAGE SEO Tips for META Keywords Tag

• “Meta Keywords” tags are less important for search engines – they have been overused by the internet marketeers over the years and have been degraded.
• “Meta Keywords” tags are used by search engines, not the directories.
• Look at your competitors keywords to give you some hints about what you should be using if they rank well within the search engines.
• HTML code for the keywords tag: <meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword1, keyword2, keyword3,… “>
• Put the Meta “Keywords” tag just after the title and description tag in the head section of your webpage
• You can code accentuated letters in HTML (&eacute; = é).
• Try to use different constructs (uppercase, lowercase, singular, plural, masculine, female, etc.) to provide variety.
• Don’t forget spelling errors typed into the search engines – these are often overlooked.
• The maximum number of keywords you should use is about 80.
• “Meta Keywords” tags should usually be different for each page and must tie in to the title and description tags, the first H1 heading and of course the general content on the page.

ONPAGE SEO Website Domain hints

• Your domain name should be rich with keywords relevant to your niche or business.
• Separate the domain name keywords with hyphens in order to help break the url
• Generally try to register your domain in this order:
  • .COM
  • .CO.UK (if in UK or whatever your local country domain is)
  • .ORG or .NET (both as useful as each other but not particularly good at ranking)
• Try to use a domain name that has been in existence with content for several years (a ranking factor is the domain name age by the search engines)

ONPAGE SEO hints for Content

• “Content is ALWAYS King” when it comes to the search engines! Ensure that your text is rich with your relevant keywords (title, description, keywords and first H1 tag).
• Images are not indexed very well by the search engines (bar the colour of the image). People like to see images – search engines like text. Make sure that every image has a keyword rich filename describing the image and that you use the ALT tag of the image to add additional description and keywords for the search engines. Search engines will see the ALT Tag and use this to index your images.
• Put your important keywords in the begining of the text, in bold.
• Make sure that your internal and external links and anchors are rich with keywords and form a proper description. For example a good link would be “information about optimising your web pages” – conversely a bad link would be “click here”. The search engines will examine the link text and try to match this to the content to see if there is a good fit. If the two match it will rank better

The “Quick Tips” is a series of articles with short tips and tricks for various Web Development subjects on search engine optimisation from Micro Update

Jonathan Camp

Jonathan Camp runs Micro Update Ltd a Professional Web Design, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Mobile Application Development in Devon. He has been actively involved with the IT and Web Services areas for over 30 years. He is a PRINCE2 Practitioner and manages a very technical team at Micro Update. The business is built on the ethic of providing a practical solution for local businesses in Devon.