By: Jason Poulos (@TheSaganaki)
Being knowledgeable and keeping up with any sort of technology or trend can be a daunting task. Sounding smart, strategic and staying on top of your game is key to any sort of client interaction. So, what happens when a spontaneous SEO conversation sparks? Silence? Blank stares? I hope not…
Knowing some basic concepts around SEO might save your butt when confronted with questions like: “Why isn’t my site ranking well?” or “I Googled our company, and it didn’t show up on page one?” and “Why is my site not getting a lot of visits?”
- Keyword Basics
- Always ask: “Is your website using keywords?” Keywords are the cornerstone of any SEO campaign and will heavily influence rankings. No keyword integration = poor rankings.
- Keywords are the terms typed into a search engine. Keywords are developed around a website’s content, subject matter and search terms for which you want to be ranked.
- A website needs to be dense with keywords. Keywords need to be located in the:
- page title
- page description
- heading tags
- url
- content
- navigation
- To maximize keyword usage, the site structure and navigation should cater toward these keywords.
- Content is king. A successful website will have unique, original and relative content to the subject matter.
- Content should be written for humans not search engines.
- This content should be link friendly (people, blogs etc. want to link to it) to help leverage resourcefulness and back links.
- News releases can and should be optimized for SEO.
- News, events, blogs, recipes and bios can be using microformats to increase visibility.
- Outside of keyword usage, links back to a site are another important aspect of SEO. The more credible and reputable the site is that links back to your site, the better.
- These links back to your site count for about 20 percent of your pages ranking factor.
- Don’t put all your back links in the social basket. Back links from Facebook and Twitter are considered “no-follow links.” They can draw traffic but won’t really help a sites back link profile.
- Don’t try to trick a search engine into better rankings, they are smart and will figure it out and ban your site.
- How a website is built has an influence on how easy or hard it is for a search engine to index the site.
- Search engines favor faster loading sites.
Content Generation
Back Links
Website Development
With a degree in communication design from VCU as well as experience in web development and digital marketing, Jason brings a unique blend of assets to CRT/tanaka. In 2012 Jason helped win 4 awards for his SEO work on PureCanadaMaple.com. Outside of his digital work, Jason enjoys brewing his own beer and restoring his1970 Chevrolet Nova. Jason is a new father and enjoys spending time with his family and his 150-pound English Mastiff.
It’s a really great blog topic to teach and share your certain knowledge to the online world like this one here, and which I certaily would love to read and share as well to other people. Thanks for this great idea Jason.
Great principles Jason.
Love number 13 – everyone spends so much looking for these shortcuts, when they might as well got some seo basics amd done it right in the first place.
Makes sense
Thanks Stacey and Philly! Glad you like the post
Basically,It’s a great blog topic to teach and share your certain knowledge to the online world like this one here, and which I Certainly would love to read and share as well to other people. Thanks for this great idea Jason.