SEO Basics: 8 Essentials When Optimizing Your Site

Basic search engine optimization (SEO) is fundamental. And essential. SEO will help you position your website properly to be found at the most critical points in the buying process or when people need your site.

What are search engines looking for? How can you build your website in a way that will please both your visitors/customers, as well as Google, Bing, and other search engines? Most importantly, how can SEO help your web presence become more profitable?

During the Introduction to SEO session at SES New York, Carolyn Shelby (@CShel), Director of SEO, Chicago Tribune/435 Digital, fully explained the extreme value SEO can deliver to a site, and stressed the importance of basic SEO using the following analogy:

"Skipping the basics and spending all your time and money on social and 'fancy stuff' is the same as skipping brushing your teeth and showering, but buying white strips and wearing expensive cologne," Shelby said.

Although the Introduction to SEO session was intended for industry newcomers, Shelby's tips offer important reminders for even experienced SEO professionals who have been optimizing sites for years.

What is SEO, Exactly?

The goal of foundational SEO isn't to cheat or "game" the search engines. The purpose of SEO is to:

• Create a great, seamless user experience.
• Communicate to the search engines your intentions so they can recommend your website for relevant searches.

1. Your Website is Like a Cake

Your links, paid search, and social media acts as the icing, but your content, information architecture, content management system, and infrastructure act as the sugar and makes the cake. Without it, your cake is tasteless, boring, and gets thrown in the trash.

2. What Search Engines Are Looking For

Search engines want to do their jobs as best as possible by referring users to websites and content that is the most relevant to what the user is looking for. So how is relevancy determined?

• Content: Is determined by the theme that is being given, the text on the page, and the titles and descriptions that are given.
• Performance: How fast is your site and does it work properly?
• Authority: Does your site have good enough content to link to or do other authoritative sites use your website as a reference or cite the information that's available?
• User Experience: How does the site look? Is it easy to navigate around? Does it look safe? Does it have a high bounce rate?

3. What Search Engines Are NOT Looking For

Search engine spiders only have a certain amount of data storage, so if you're performing shady tactics or trying to trick them, chances are you're going to hurt yourself in the long run. Items the search engines don't want are:

• Keyword Stuffing: Overuse of keywords on your pages.
• Purchased Links: Buying links will get you nowhere when it comes to SEO, so be warned.
• Poor User Experience: Make it easy for the user to get around. Too many ads and making it too difficult for people to find content they're looking for will only increase your bounce rate. If you know your bounce rate it will help determine other information about your site. For example, if it's 80 percent or higher and you have content on your website, chances are something is wrong.

4. Know Your Business Model

While this is pretty obvious, so many people tend to not sit down and just focus on what their main goals are. Some questions you need to ask yourself are:

• What defines a conversion for you?
• Are you selling eyeballs (impressions) or what people click on?
• What are your goals?
• Do you know your assets and liabilities?

5. Don't Forget to Optimize for Multi-Channels

Keyword strategy is not only important to implement on-site, but should extend to other off-site platforms, which is why you should also be thinking about multi-channel optimization. These multi-channel platforms include:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email
• Offline, such as radio and TV ads

Being consistent with keyword phrases within these platforms will not only help your branding efforts, but also train users to use specific phrases you're optimizing for.

6. Be Consistent With Domain Names

Domain naming is so important to your overall foundation, so as a best practice you're better off using sub-directory root domains (example.com/awesome) versus sub-domains (awesome.example.com). Some other best practices with domain names are:

• Consistent Domains: If you type in www.example.com, but then your type in just example.com and the "www" does not redirect to www.example.com, that means the search engines are seeing two different sites. This isn't effective for your overall SEO efforts as it will dilute your inbound links, as external sites will be linking to www.example.com and example.com.
• Keep it Old School: Old domains are better than new ones, but if you're buying an old domain, make sure that the previous owner didn't do anything shady to cause the domain to get penalized.
• Keywords in URL: Having keywords you're trying to rank for in your domain will only help your overall efforts.

7. Optimizing for Different Types of Results

In addition to optimizing for the desktop experience, make sure to focus on mobile and tablet optimization as well as other media.

• Create rich media content like video, as it's easier to get a video to rank on the first page than it is to get a plain text page to rank.
• Optimize your non-text content so search engines can see it. If your site uses Flash or PDFs, make sure you read up on the latest best practices so search engines can crawl that content and give your site credit for it.

8. Focus on Your Meta Data Too

Your content on your site should have title tags and meta descriptions.

• Meta keywords are pretty much ignored by search engines nowadays, but if you still use them, make sure it talks specifically to that page and that it is also formatted correctly.
• Your meta description should be unique and also speak to that specific page. Duplicate meta descriptions from page to page will not get you anywhere.

Title tags should also be unique! Think your title as a 4-8 word ad, so do your best to entice the reader so they want to click and read more.

Summary

You should always keep SEO in the forefront of your mind, and always follow best practices. Skipping the basics of SEO will only leave your site's foundation a mess and prevent you from fully maximizing revenue opportunities.

5 Steps to Create a Website That Both Your Customers & Search Engines Will Love

A major mistake businesses often make when it comes to SEO is optimizing their website at the expense of their customers. Have you ever entered a website while researching a product or service, only to be confronted with massive amounts of content on a poorly designed website? This probably resulted in not only a frustrating experience, but also your exit from the site, and a lost sale for that business.

Here are five steps you can implement to avoid this scenario, and create a website that both your customers and search engines will love.

Step 1: Understand Your Customer

This seems obvious, but business owners tend to design websites that are appealing to them, rather than figuring out what is appealing to their customers. The way you perceive your products or services may be very different than how your customers perceive them.

If you don’t already know, figure out why your existing customers buy from you, rather than your competitors, and make this differentiation readily apparent on your website.

Communicating this value proposition to prospective customers as soon as they enter your website can mean the difference between whether they choose to stay on your site, and whether they choose to do business with you.

Step 2: Don’t Attempt to Create a Work of Art

Websites don't have to be beautiful. They just have to be useful and engaging to your target audience.

This isn't to say your website shouldn't be attractive. But unless you're selling art, it doesn't have to be a work of art. Instead, focus your energy on creating aesthetics that appeal to your customers, emphasize credibility, and improve your brand.

Different aesthetics appeal to different audiences. For example, if your target audience is women ages 18 to 28, the colors, fonts, and imagery you choose to incorporate in your website should be very different than if you’re targeting men ages 45 to 55.

Additionally, emphasize credibility and improve your brand by utilizing a professional design. A website that looks cheap can undermine the credibility of your business and detract from your brand.

Step 3: Create Purposeful, Well-Written Content

The purpose of the content on your website should be to inform your reader, rather than to attract search engines. Your content should be well written, concise, and purposeful. Poor grammar, excessive verbiage, and content without a clear purpose will turn off readers, and potentially result in lost customers.

For each page on your website, ask yourself the following questions

• What is the purpose of this page?
• Will my customers find this information valuable?
• What is the impression I want to make on the person reading it?
• What is the action I want the reader to take?

Step 4: Provide Easy-to-Use Navigation

User-friendly navigation is key to allowing your customers to quickly and conveniently find what they’re looking for on your site. Incorporate navigation in both the header and the footer, so your customers have easy access to it, regardless of where they are on the page. If your site has lots of pages, consider including a drop-down menu for easy access to pages deep within your site.

Also, consider including a sidebar menu that allows for an alternative way to access pages deep within your site. For example, ecommerce sites often list product types in the header navigation and list brand types in the sidebar menu, or vice versa. This gives the customer the option to search by product type or brand, rather than forcing them to search by one or the other.

Step 5: Measure & Improve

Once all of these elements are in place, measure the results by determining your key performance indicators (KPIs). Of course, you want to monitor your search engine rankings, but understanding how those rankings contribute to increased quality traffic, and conversions is essential.

For example, if you own an ecommerce store, your KPIs should include purchases and shopping cart abandonment rates. If you own a brick and mortar, your KPIs may include contact form submissions, phone calls, and the percentage of those form submissions and phone calls that result in sales.

Utilize tracking software such as Google Analytics and know where your customers are coming from, and the steps they are taking that result in conversions, and those that do not. Use this data to continuously improve both your website and your SEO strategy.

Conclusion

Follow these five steps to create a website that both your customers and search engines will love. This will not only improve your rankings, but your bottom line as well.

How to Use Google Webmaster Tools to Maximize Your SEO Campaign

Google provides a number of tools for your SEO arsenal. The most obvious is Google Analytics, which offers an in-depth analytics suite to help even the most basic user understand and improve traffic to their website. But Google Webmaster Tools gives the advanced search expert another perspective on planning and evaluating his or her search efforts.

Here's a closer look at how to use Google Webmaster Tools to get the most out of your SEO campaign.

Google Webmaster Tools: The Background

Google's Webmaster Tools are essential for any strong SEO effort. To understand their full potential, it's helpful to think about what Google Webmaster Tools' role is for webmasters: it helps you see your website as Google sees it. The toolset gives you insights into what pages have been indexed on your site, what links are pointing to it, your most popular keywords, and much more.

A site that's active in Webmaster Tools has a better shot at being fully indexed and ranking well. There are also a number of deeper insights from Google Webmaster Tools can be turned into SEO tactical gold.

If you haven't set your site up on Google Webmaster Tools yet, getting started is simple. Once you've signed up for an account, login to the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard. From there, you're able to add your site.

You'll have to first verify that you own the domain. Depending on your host, Google may provide verification through an easy pop-up process that allows you to login and verify in just a couple steps.

Other options include entering a Google-provided meta tag to your homepage, uploading an HTML file to your site's root folder, or confirming ownership via Google Analytics if it's already installed on your site. After you've verified your website, it'll usually start populating data within 24 – 48 hours.

Google Webmaster Tools Features You Should Be Using

Once your site is set up, it's time to log in and get to know the interface. If you need an introductory tutorial, here's a good overview.

At its core, Google Webmaster Tools is all about metrics: what's getting indexed, what's getting linked, and what's getting traffic.

Breaking down that data in different ways and looking at it with an eye toward learning specific things will help you make the most of the information. From this data, you can quickly formulate a plan around what next steps you need to take.

Get the Lay of the Land with Search Queries

 

The Search Queries area gives you both traffic and keyword information.

Why not just consult Google Analytics? Actually, Google Webmaster Tools gives a completely different (and possibly more holistic) view. It doesn't just show you the breakdown of the traffic that made it to your site; it shows your traffic potential via impressions and site ranking across Google search results as well.

The Search Queries section is broken down into five main indicators:

• Query: Query gives you details on what keywords your site is currently ranked for. This is one of the fastest ways to decode whether your efforts to get on the map for a specific keyword are working. It's important to remember that "rank for" means showing up in the SERPs – not necessarily actively attracting traffic (yet). This feature can help you quickly identify keywords that are relevant, but need a boost from linking or further content optimization.
• Impressions: If you've ever wondered how many people are seeing your website for a specific keyword search, this will tell you. This metric gives you a good sense of how many people are seeing specific sections of your content. This is another way to confirm the value of a keyword in addition to traffic data from the Google Keywords module and other tools.
• Clicks: Of the people who are seeing your site, how many are clicking? This information lets you know how many searchers seeing your site are taking action and clicking on your search result.
• CTR: Your CTR, or click-through rate, is the percentage of people that are clicking on your site in the search results. If your click-through rates are low, look at whether you can improve your meta description for that page. Can the content be made more relevant to the queries driving the most impressions for that page, or can you add a stronger call to action in the title tag or meta description? You should also consider the broader search landscape: is PPC activity driving traffic away from your branded results in the search, for example?
• Average Position: This metric tells you where your site typically ranks for each keyword. Since the vast majority of traffic goes to the sites in the top 2 positions for a given term, it's helpful to see how you're performing and the impact that has on your traffic.

Viewing Data With Change to See Trends Over Time

If you've recently launched a new SEO strategy and want to see how effective it is, one of the best ways to do that is to use the "With Change" feature. While you're in the Search Queries section, activate the "With Change" button. This shifts the perspective and shows your current statistics as well as looking at your change in performance over time.

This data can be useful in a number of ways. Have you recently changed your site copy? If so, this can help to gauge the effectiveness of your updates. It's also useful in the context of Google updates to see how your average rankings and conversions have been affected. Tracking this information over time is the best way to consistently adapt your SEO strategy to the broader SEO landscape.

Drilling Into Individual Keywords

To understand how you're performing for an individual keyword, click on that term while you're in the search query section. Diving into the data for individual keywords gives you insights on which pages are ranking for those words. Not only will this help you better understand your overall SEO successes, it specifically informs different elements of your content strategy.

It lets you know if content you're developing is effectively targeting your selected terms. It also helps you identify connections you might not have perceived previously between existing content and target queries. Individual keywords with potential can also be given more focus when you're developing new content such as blog posts, videos, and more.

Finding Optimization Opportunities with Top Pages

Within the "Search Queries" area, you'll have the opportunity to see the "top pages." This metric tells you which content on your site gets the most impressions and clicks. You can identify low-hanging fruit opportunities that are easy to capitalize on.

For example, if you have content that gets a great CTR but is ranking on Page 2 of the SERPs, you could build some links to that page in order to bump it to the first page. If you've been working hard to optimize content that's not getting traction, you will often find other pages that are organically capturing visitors and can adjust your strategy. The key here is to understand that sometimes your audience focuses on something unexpected, and by uncovering that information you're able to deliberately build your strategy to make the most of it.

Refining Your Page-Level Strategy

When you structured your site, you likely chose specific keywords to target with each page or section of content on your site. Google Webmaster Tools allows you to take that process in reverse, and identify what keywords each page of your content ranks for. Likely these will include both your target keywords and some surprises.

Once you've mapped out the keywords for each page, add those keywords to a rank tracking tool to find out additional data like traffic and competition. This will help you uncover any unexploited opportunities.

Once you get a list of what keywords a particular page ranks for, you should make sure your page actually contains all those keywords. Pay specific attention to high value real estate like your page titles and the first paragraph of your article.

Using Google Webmaster Tools Labs: Author Stats

Google's Labs are where they test new features that are still being refined. Some will make it into the standard Google Webmaster Tools feature set, while others will fade away (like Site Performance). One popular option is the Author Stats information.

Author Stats allows you to tie in guest posts on other sites by connecting it to your Google + author account. Google Authorship is a major topic in the SEO world: it's easily accomplished by "rel=author" tag that's imbedded as a link in specific articles.

Your picture will appear next to content in the search engines, and it's much easier for readers to find related material that you've written. It will also likely be used by Google in the future in the form of Author Rank.

"Author Stats" functionality can be used to identify the search statistics for your guest posts.

Up to now, it's been hard to know what kind of traffic your posts on various sites get. This data can be a major input into your guest posting strategy. Now it's possible to look quantitatively at not only which links are valuable, but how each posting is exposing your brand in a meaningful and scaled way.

Summary

When you're developing an SEO strategy, consulting Google Webmaster Tools can give you a unique perspective. Diving into the data provides new opportunities to understand how your site is performing and help improve your overall campaign performance.

Are you using Google Webmaster Tools in other ways to support your SEO efforts? Let me know in the comments sections below!