by Christine Scott
One thing that many small companies struggle with is understanding and implementing SEO. Webopedia defines SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, as the strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine. To successfully master SEO we need to understand how a search engine work. The engines analyze the content and text of your page, then catalog and rate it. When someone goes online and begins a search the engine reports back with pages that are relevant or most closely match to the search. Optimizing your website requires a considerable amount of time, research, and implementation, but can greatly increase traffic to your page. Here are 3 easy ways to get started on successfully implementing SEO into your website.
Title tags
A title tag is the specific title of a webpage. It is shown as the clickable headline on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). It is one of the most important components of your website when it comes to SEO. The tags are used to associate key terms and phrases to the content of your page and it’s the first thing a person see when looking through a search engine. Your title tag should be a short and accurate description of your page content. Google normally display 50-60 characters of a title page, and if it exceeds this number the search engines will cut it off. This could potentially distort the message you want to convey, therefore, keep it under 60 characters to ensure it’s accuracy.
Meta description
The meta description is a short summary of your webpage content. You normally see it under the title tag on the SERP. In 2009 Google reported that the meta description does not directly affect ranking on its page, it is used solely to attract readers to your title tag. The more people that click on your page the better chance it has to move up the search engine rank. The description should be short, accurate, unique, and should also include key terms. It should stay within 135-160 characters and should be an accurate description of the content. Keep in mind, your page can actually be penalized for having an inaccurate description. When you include keywords to the description Google will highlight the words so that it’s clearer to the reader.
Relevant inbound link
An inbound link is a hyperlink back to your webpage from another site. The more quality inbound links you have the higher your search engine rank. The first reason for this is that someone else has recognized your page as an authoritative source. The second reason is that they are now referring you to their audience, which in turn, should increase traffic to your site. There is a misconception that the more inbound links you have the higher your traffic will be, but it isn’t necessarily true. Search engines now evaluate the quality of the linkage by determining if the inbound links source and referring site are related or relevant to a product, business, or industry. For further information on this, check out 33 Ways to Build Inbound Links for SEO.