10 of the most important SEO Tips – Part 1 of 2

1. Optimise every page on your website
The major search engines are not looking at individual websites and ranking them, they are ranking pages from every website in the world. This means that if your website contains more than one page you should optimise for the specific content which is found on each page. By optimising every webpage of your site you can benefit from targeting less competitive (but still highly relevant) keyword phrases.

2. Pick appropriate keyword phrases
This is the single most important area of search engine optimisation. Keywords which your potential customers type into the search engines are the keywords your site should contain within the specific areas of your copy and code (see below; Optimising your Page Titles and Optimising your Content). There are a number of useful keyword research tools available on the web. Google provides its own free keyword research tool to assist your efforts.

3. Optimising your Page Titles
All of the major search engines have 100’s of different algorithms which decide where your webpage will be listed for different keyword searches. Putting keywords you are attempting to rank highly for within the title tag of your pages is one of the most important SEO techniques. Focused title tags will help your website climb through the search engine rankings and allow your visitors to remember exactly what your page is all about when they save it to their “favourites”.

4. Optimising your Page Content
Writing optimised content for your website can be a challenge. Including targeted keywords (for SEO purposes) within your copy and writing in a professional style for your visitors is a difficult balance to achieve.
There are a number of very useful books that can help you with your online copywriting skills. However, one of the best guidelines is to simply write for your visitors and include the keywords and keyphrases as much as makes sense. Read what you written out loud to yourself and a few others. If it sounds stupid (too much keyword repetition, broken and unprofessional style of writing, etc.)… lather, rinse, and repeat.

5. Create an inbound linking strategy
Submitting your site to online directories can be a beneficial way to drive targeted traffic to your website. People will find your listing in a directory and click on the link to go directly to your site.
This not only brings visitors to your website, but it also creates links for search engine “spiders” or “robots” to find your website and index your pages within their results. If your site doesn’t have a link pointing to it; search engines will not find your pages and be able to provide you with free traffic.

Next Monday we will be publishing tips 6- 10 so make sure you stay up to date with our blog posts by adding us to your RSS Feed.

I hope you have found this post useful. Please feel free to add your comments below.