5 Tips for SEO

Search engines have the ability to drive huge amounts of traffic to your website so long as the site is optimised correctly. While good content is critically important to a website, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) still plays a big part in helping search engines to properly and efficiently index your website.

The below tips cover some basic steps for SEO. Remember to not overdo any one element of SEO as search engines will see this as spamming.

Tip #1: Cover the basics by using the Title and Meta Description tags
Sometimes overlooked, the Title and Meta Description tags are likely to be the first elements that a search engine encounters when it looks at a page on your website. It is important to have unique text in the Title and Meta Description tags for each page of your website.

Be careful to limit the amount of text that you use as well. Best practice states that Title tags should be less than 70 characters, while Meta Description tag on the other hand may be about 155 characters.

Tip #2: Repeat keywords in the right places
If you’re targeting a particular keyword on a page... ensure that the phrase is repeated in the right places on that page. For example, if you have a page that is about red shoes, then make sure you use “red shoes” in the Title tag, the Meta Description tag, the main heading (H1) tag and in the body text as well. The repetition helps to reinforce the page topic, letting Google know what your web page is about.

Tip #3: Optimise image file names and alt text
Images and photos are a big part of websites and help to break up large chunks of text. The main problem with images at the moment is that search engines cannot read the text that is embedded in the image. Luckily, there are a couple of other ways to tell the search engine what the image is about. Make sure to put in alt text for your images. This alternative text is good for accessibility and also for letting search engines know what is happening in the image. Additionally, consider using keywords in the image file name to reinforce the page topic.

Tip #4: Utilise meaningful, readable URLs with keywords
Make sure that the URLs on your website are meaningful and user-friendly. Try to avoid URLs that include query strings, nonsensical combinations of characters or those that go into a very deep folder structure.

Tip #5: Use free SEO tools
There are many tools and resources out there to help you improve the SEO of your website. The good news is that a lot of them are free! Google Webmaster Tools also offers great free resources for seeing what queries your website displays for in search results and also what problems (if any) the google search engine has with your website. Open Site Explorer from SEOmoz is another great tool for analysing links that come in to your website and the rank that your website has with other websites.