[O]ne of the most common questions I get asked is “How can I improve my SEO, search engine optimization, in my website?” Stated another way, “What can I do to help search engines find my site?” As a SEO Website Design developer, I will dedicate the next five posts with SEO tips to help you get found. Sometimes it is the smallest of tweaks to make all the different between getting found on page one, or being buried on page 180. Here are five free tips for slick searchable SEO.
1. Meaty Meaningful Meta Data for Slick Searchable SEO
With a WordPress website or blog it is more important than ever that you fill out all of the Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, Meta Keywords, and any and all SEO Settings within your pages and posts. I’ll go into more details in the next post with recommended plugins and examples of what to write in your meta data areas. For now, don’t leave ANY of these meta data areas blank. Take the time to fill them out with MEATY meaningful descriptions. It is a key to get found.
2. Common Catchy Categories for Slick Searchable SEO
With blogging, it is important that you organize your posts into catchy categories that are logical and meaningful. Gone are the days of short one word categories like “writing,” “life,” or “tips.” Categories should be 2-5 words long, catchy, and purposeful. Do not create a category until you have at least five post to fill it. Your blog needs to have at least 5-10 categories but no more than 20. Each post should be associated with one category, if you need more, use them as tags.
3. Pretty Permalink Pages for Slick Searchable SEO
Your website and blog must use good permalinks. Don’t take the WordPress default that creates pages for you like p=204. Instead switch your permalink settings to include the category and the title name. Study the permalink carefully using only keyword searchable words. For example, this post is permalinked as “/seo-website/five-free-tips-seo-wordpress/”. The “seo-website” is the category, and “five-free-tips-seo-wordpress” is a good permalink. We’ll talk more details about this in future posts.
4. Interesting Intelligent Images Named Neatly & Nicely for Slick Searchable SEO
One of the easiest way to have your pages and posted found via SEO, is to take the time and add meta tags to the images embedded into your post. The name of your images, the meta description, and meta tags on your images are paramount. Having at least one image on each page or posts helps as well.
5. Standard Structured Silos for Slick Searchable SEO
This is the newest and perhaps the hardest concept to understand. The silo structure concept is having meaningful pages under each main topic from the home page, or in blogging having meaningful posts under each category. Furthermore, in blogging it is necessary to release three to five blogs as a series under one category without changing categories. Again, I will go into very specific details in upcoming posts.
Image courtesy of Creativedoxfoto at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
What additional tips would you recommend for making your site found easily through SEO?
