SEO Tips: Basics to Move Your Site Up in the Search Engines

I'm not going to say it's easy to get onto page one for your targeted keywords, but it is not rocket science, either. Basic, sound principles can easily be applied which will allow you to move your site up in the major search engines. It takes perseverance, a little "out of body experience" (I'll explain), and some surprisingly simple methods.

Many SEO companies (and we do not claim to be an SEO company - we just know what has worked for us) will promise you "Page 1" results. When I hear that, I get a little nervous. You can certainly shoot for page 1 (and that is, of course, the goal), but if there are 50,000 people selling Super Duper Widgets and they are all implementing sound SEO practices, they will not all make it to page 1 or that coveted number one spot. However, the key here is that not everyone will employ sound SEO practices - in design or in SEO. This is why you should!

If you have a website, you have no doubt heard about keywords. Keywords are what a searcher will type into the search engine to find you, your services or products. Keywords can be a short (two to four word) phrase or a word or two. They should always be relevant to your particular page. Adding misleading keywords in the hopes of increasing your search engine ranking is not only poor search engine optimization, it is considered bad practice and spam. Such actions can actually hinder your ranking - and in extreme cases, completely ruin your online presence, banning you from the search engine altogether.

But how do you determine keywords for your page? It's really not as hard as you might think. This is where that "out of body experience" comes in. Sit back and become the searcher. If you were looking for you, what would you be looking for? Remember, no two searchers will ever search the same way, so do not limit yourself; phrase your keywords in slightly different ways, making sure all the time they are relevant. Perhaps you will not make it to page 1 for one keyword, but you will make it to page one or even that number 1 spot for another keyword. If you need some help, there are several keyword tools available online. Google has a useful suite of tools for webmasters including their keyword tool. And while it may be tempting to check out the competition's keywords, resist the urge to copy what they are doing verbatim. Aside from the copyright infringement issues, most search engines frown on mirroring sites...and your duplication could actually harm you (and them) in the long run.

While keywords are essential, some would argue that the keyword meta tag has gone the way of the dodo bird. Some search engines algorithms still use the meta keyword tag, but many do not. Still, I find no reason to leave it out completely. The total characters should be limited to around 200 and all keywords (separated by commas) should relate to that page. Keyword stuffing (adding excessive keywords in the hopes of a higher search engine rank) is clearly frowned upon and could do more harm than good.

Once you have determined your keywords, you now must incorporate them into the title, description and content of your page. Write copy which clearly reflects your purpose, company or products and makes use of the keywords you are targeting to get your message out. Your copy should also "make sense" to your human visitors. Simply adding a hodgepodge of keywords to your page will add no relevance to the page and could do serious harm to your search engine rank. I once paid an SEO "expert" who actually did this to one of my sites. I was forced to leave the nonsense on my page for the six-month contract or risk the guarantee. I waited it out as my site plummeted. I would have been better off to forgo the refund and yank the garbage off the site!