How to SEO for absolute beginners
I see you have made your website, found yourself a perfect hosting service and uploaded it there. Everything looks shiny and great but you can’t find it in Search Engines. You have tried googling everything to locate your website but it hardly appears there even when you search for your domain.
Well, that’s because you haven’t made your website attractive for search engine yet. Now, that is about to change because I’m going to guide you through the absolute basics of SEO that you can do on your website RIGHT NOW. And by the way, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) means making some specific but subtle changes in your website that might (yes, might) change visibility of your website in search engine. Thus, Search Engine Optimization. Now, let’s see how we can perform basic on page SEO.
1. Optimizing title of your website:
This has to be the most important task you can do inorder to make your website search engine friendly. Title of your website is the text that you write between <title></title> tag. Imagine a story, title for your website is like name of that story. That name should be relative to the story using couple of words only. So having a proper title for your website or specific web page is the most important thing. Here are the things that you should keep in mind before creating great title.
- It should be under 70 characters.
- It should use all the necessary keywords that you think should represent your website.
- Don’t repeat keywords on title as Search Engines may flag it as spam.
- Be clear and specific while preparing title.
Bad practice: Web Developer for hire, Best Web Developer in Nepal, Web Development in Nepal
Good Practice: Web Development in Nepal by Best Web developer.
2. Proper meta description:
This is the second most important thing that you have to optimize inorder for search engines to even consider your website to make visible. We need to remember, Search engines will display two elements form your page in search result, title of the page and description of the page. You expect your visitors to click on the website based on these two information. So, while preparing your Meta description, don’t copy and paste the first paragraph. Follow the instructions below to make perfect Meta description.
- Don’t copy the first paragraph of your web page, just don’t!
- Be clear, on to point and persuasive.
- Don’t exceed the description more than 150 characters.
- Make sure you use your main keywords in description.
3. Meta keywords = Not important.
Yes, Meta keywords aren’t that important to google. They have been obsolete for a while now. Instead, place your keywords all over your website, i.e. title, description, body, headings. Strategic placement of keywords are the key to SEO.
4. Heading Tags management:
6 types of heading tags are available to you. From <h1> to <h6>. Use heading tags whenever you have to describe a paragraph. It’s a safe practice to use <h1> tag once to describe the main page, h2 to describe sub topic. Don’t forget to put keywords in your headings.
5. Keyword Consistency:
Since we have established the fact that Meta keywords are not necessary anymore, we can use the keyword that you decide for your website within your content in an organic manner. Don’t over use it but make it consistent. You may highlight your keywords using <strong></strong> tag.
6. Using images to your advantage.
Your website is bound to have couple of images, why not use them to your advantage. When you insert an image, make sure you use your keyword as your “alt text”. There is no trick to it but make sure you keep image and keyword relative to each other.
7. Link Management:
Links help your visitors and spiders to navigate through website. They also help you to establish a structural hierarchy on your website. So, what you want to do is, create a healthy network of internal links with “title” attribute having the proper keyword.
8. Create and submit an xml sitemap.
Sitemap is list of all available pages that your user or the crawler are allowed to visit in your website. This xml document is taken by the crawlers as a map when they sniff your website, hence, the sitemap. You may wonder that you don’t know anything about xml, in that case, there are many free to use tools that you can find in web which will allow you to create search engine friendly sitemaps.
Bonus: Signup for google webmaster and google analytics and track how visitors and search engines are reacting to your website. They will provide you with valuable information like if you are hitting your target group or not and they also provide suggestions on how to reach more of your target demographic.
