Introduction: Search engine optimization, in simple terms, is the task of making your website as visible as possible to the world. While this may sound vague as well as daunting, it is actually a fairly straightforward concept that I have outlined below.
The two most important practices to ensure great SEO, and in turn a high ranking on search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo) are good quality content, and organization for that good content
This can be achieved relatively easily by doing the following:
1. Ensuring your content is written well, and is highly relevant to your website. This involves using keywords that are popular for that particular topic. For example, a website about “dog care” may have keywords such as immunizations, kennels, breeds, leashes etc.
2. Organizing your keywords and certain content through header tags (H1-H6) will show search engines the important things your wanting to be emphasized to Google and other search engines.
Additionally, there are other important methods to further optimize your website’s SEO. Below I will go over some additional tips that will definitely have a large impact on your ranking on search engines (especially when used in combination with the above mentioned)
– Use “Google Friendly” image file names. For example, instead of an image named “371dfm0.jpg” use “dog-trainer-park-ball.jpg”.
– Also use “Google Friendly” permalink names. For example, a web page on your website should not read ww.dogcarewecare.org/page2 but rather www.dogcarewecare.org/dog-and-trainer-videos
– Share backlinks to relevant sites that have similar content to your own, especially high ranking and high traffic websites.
– Create an XML sitemap, which allows the search engine’s “spiders” to properly “crawl” through your website. The plugin Google XML Sitemaps is a solid plugin to do this job for you.
Side note: While I suggest as well as prefer to do SEO on a step-by-step process to make sure work is done as optimally as possible, there are other simpler options. One of the most used SEO plugins Yoast SEO can do quite a bit in terms of everything mentioned about, but there is always the option to be hands on with this sort of thing. This plugin also requires WordPress, however Drupal has their own version of this plugin.
With Google and other search engines constantly switching up their algorithms and particular fields being flooded with keyword ninjas that all want to be on top of search engines, it is absolutely imperative to keep bringing in quality content and stay ahead of the crowd. Anyways, I hope these tips were useful and if you are needing any help, or want to buy me a beer don’t hesitate to shoot me an em
