You can add Basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to your website - especially on your home page, with a little awareness and effort, and it only takes about an hour. Ultimately, even basic SEO will serve to appease the various versions of search engine algorithms aimed at providing worthwhile organic results. Developing an understanding of how to do this on your own can mean the difference between a website that gets noticed and one that lives on the back pages of the SERPs.
There are three areas to consider: Keywords, Meta Tags and Content.
Keywords
Keywords are what people will search for you by. For example, if you’re a plumber in Memphis, that’s a keyword. Someone might search for you like that. The latest thinking is to create keywords with a tail and keep them local, if possible (like plumber in Memphis)
You probably want to develop no more than eight keywords. To see if they’re being used by others, there are free and pay keyword tools on the internet that will let you know the number of monthly searches by keyword.
Keep keywords closely related to your business. In other words, if you operate a spa, do not use Pittsburgh Steelers as a keyword just because it gets a lot of searches.
Meta Tags
Meta Tags are behind the scenes. While they are viewed by search engines, they do not appear on your website. However, you can often see what your competitors use as tags by right clicking just off of their home page. When the drop down appears, click on view source. You can then scan the code for the following two meta tags:
• Title (60 to 70 characters)
• Description (150 to 200 characters)
Title is where you want to put your most important keywords. If you’re a spa in Pittsburgh, put Spa in Pittsburgh and maybe Hair coloring at XYZ Spa in the title tag.
The description is a brief sentence on what you do, benefit and call to action. It might read: Come for a special hair coloring, spa, pedicure or manicure experience at --- Spa in Pittsburgh
Remember you will want all of the meta tags to appear in the content for that page. However, it should be noted that major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing do not use meta data when analyzing a site anymore; instead they look at other signals, but meta data could one day come back into use by these search engines. Some SE's however, do still use meta data, including Alta Vista, among many other lesser search engines.
Content
For content, you already know you want to work in all of your keywords and the meta title and description tags. Place the keywords in the beginning, middle and end of your writing. The description can go at the beginning of your page. However, all of the content needs to be written using a natural, unforced flow. You want it to showcase the benefits of your business while still being appealing to both real users and search engines.
As far as word count, the typical answer is to use however many words you need to. But, you may want to consider limiting it to no more than 400-500 words per page. Make liberal use of bullet points, bold words, headlines and short paragraphs and sentences to create an easy to view space.
Additionally, change some of the content on each page at least quarterly but preferably much more often if possible. Daily meaningful content additions and changes mean that it's likely your site will be crawled and indexed more often, providing you with a better chance to rank higher for your key terms.
Finally, put a compelling call to action (like below) at the end of every page.
If you understand the basic concepts of SEO but don't have the time or skills to do it yourself, call the number at the top of your screen now for an immediate consultation and strategy session designed to get your business to the top of search results. Don't wait to make the call, because you can be sure your competitors are already taking action.
