I’ve gotten this question a few times and while there are posts all over the Internet, this subject continues to evolve. Here’s my experience with both studying and implementing SEO and ways to use it to increase your site’s traffic.

First off SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This is the process (ongoing process) of managing and adapting your site so that search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, ASK and others can find you. The reason SEO is important is because you want to go beyond being found, you want to be found first on that search engine list. The first three/four links on the first page of any search engine is gloryland. This excludes the paid advertising that is found above or on the sidebar of the actual search findings. I’m discussing natural SEO only this round…

Getting started you should know that there are two sides to SEO. On-page and off-page and both are exactly what they say they are. On-page SEO relates to content that is put on and managed in your site. While on-page SEO isn’t weighted as much as off-page SEO you should always start with your on-page SEO. Off-page SEO relates to the incoming links and how the links are ranked from an incoming referral. I’m going to break this down into two sections to cover both on-page and off-page SEO. I’m going to talk a lot about Google specifically because of the massive amount of search traffic they provide. Google currently weighs the off-page SEO around 70-75% in relation to your search engine ranking, a very important piece of the puzzle for sure. The on-page then accounts for the other 25-30%

On-page SEO

The on-page SEO consists of the following (depending on the search engine some are more important than others):

  • An optimized page title. The page title should be consistent with the content on that specific page
  • An optimized URL. Use keywords that are specific to the page when possible in your url.
  • Optimized section/page headings. This one gets skipped a lot! Use the header tag when you title sections of your page, Google looks for a code that is specific to your headings (this is the <h1> tag).
  • Optimized meta data. This content is “behind the scenes” on your website,
    • Keywords: Keywords are not calculated by Google anymore, however they are still important with Yahoo and others. Again, optimize based on content of specific page
    • Description: This is the description of the page. A good description isn’t longer that 2 lines and is specific to its page. The description is read by search engines and will be displayed in search results.
  • Optimized images. When building your site or uploading pics make sure you name the image according to the context that it will be used. Use the “ALT” tag, this is the text that will be displayed if the image doesn’t load correctly, use descriptive words of the image.
  • Optimized content. When writing copy for your pages use keywords you have already defined for that page.
  • Optimize internal links. Use text based links internally. Use these links sparingly to point to important content on your site.
  • Traffic and Analytics. Don’t forget to include tracking scripts or codes to your site. These analytics will help you keep up with what works and what doesn’t. Google analytics is free and very detailed.

You can begin to see the consistency from the start to the end for your on-page SEO. You are making sure the search engine knows everything it can about this page. It let’s the search engine know that this content is legit from the page title to the description to the actual content. KaBam! On your way to high rankings for your pages.

Off-Page SEO

The off-page SEO is more important when it comes to ranking your page, but it cannot exist with out the on-page SEO and this includes content! Off-page SEO is basically incoming links, who is linking to you and how? Search engines use these incoming links to see who is linking to you and why. This validates your content, it basically says you have something worth looking at and Google says “let me see!”.

A quick overview on how links are ranked by Google and other search engines. Search engines give every site a PR Score. This score is based on the incoming links that the site has. The search engine then uses this score to rank the links as they pertain to the sites they are linking to (ranking the outbound link according to the content being linked to). Knowing this, here are some specifics that will affect the ranking of the linked site.

  • The PR score of the referring site and page. If the site linking to your site is CNN then you can bet that Google will increase your off-page SEO based on the quality of that link. If it’s your mom’s cats blog then the incoming page rank won’t count as much.
  • How many links are coming from the referring site? Less links from a specific page (not overall incoming links) means that your site is important to that page thus helping your individual incoming link ranking.
  • Keywords in the link. If the link says “click here” rather than “click here for info on your mom’s cat” then Google won’t understand as well, it just sees “click here”. The second has keywords that are relative about your mom’s cat. If the link takes you to a page about your mom’s cat then guess what? The link has a better ranking because it has the keywords that are specific to the link.
  • Age of links. The longer the link has been around the better.
  • Are the links reciprocal? If the reciprocal links are actually links to quality pages and content that relate to your site and their site then it’s good stuff. However, search engines look down on links that they believe are just link exchanges in an effort to increase SEO. Yes, Google bots are that smart!

Those are some of the basics regarding incoming links and how they are graded.

How to manage or pro actively increase your inbound links.

  • List your site in directories. Some sites to list in: Yahoo.com, DMOZ.org, zoominfo.com or aboutus.org (not comprehensive, there are 1000s of directory sites)
  • Social Media sites are places to also build incoming links. These links are less likely to give SEO credit unless updated and actively maintained with relative content. I would test a few to see if they are giving off the quality of links that you are looking for.
  • Press Releases. Press releases can be a great tool to create inbound links and often times from quality sites. Many PR services have a high PR score resulting in better inbound links.

It’s very important to avoid link farms, paid link engines, link exchanges and the such. This may seem perfectly legit to the average user because you are linking to another site to help them out or so they can help you out. That’s exactly why Google doesn’t like them. Google looks at this as ways to beat the system. Doing this is the quickest way to lower your PR score and fall far into search engine oblivion.

Wow. That’s a lot of writing!!! I’m sure there are things that I over looked or that have changed even since I wrote this but I hope this gives a basic overview of Search Engine Optimization and how it works. Like anything please contact me with questions or leave a comment below.

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This post is all drinking from Watercooler Wednesday today @ Ethos!