If you want people to find your website in the search engines
like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, you need to be doing SEO, which
stands for ‘search engine optimization’. SEO is a set of methods
and techniques that that can help your website rank better in the
search engine results pages. A higher ranking means that more
people will see your website when they use the search engines,
which in turn leads to more visitors to your website.

SEO can be a complicated subject, which is why there are so many
freelance consultants and digital marketing agencies offering SEO
services. However, if you are running on a tight budget and can’t
afford to hire a professional, there is a lot of SEO you can do
yourself. Here are five SEO actions for beginners that you should
be using on your website.

1. Choose your keywords wisely. When you are
planning your website’s content, you should do some research
about which keywords to use. Keywords are the search terms that
people use to find websites in search engines. Think carefully
about your target audience and consider what they might type into
a search engine when they are looking for websites like yours.
You can use tools like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to help
you with your research. When you are starting out, aim to have a
list of no more than ten keywords that you will optimize your
website for. Once you are ranking well for these ten, you can add
more keywords to the list.

2. Use your keywords in the title tags of your web
pages. Most SEO experts agree that a web page’s title
tag is one of the most important factors for how that page will
rank in the search engines. You should always ensure that your
title tag includes at least one of your keywords. The title tag
should also describe the content of the page in a concise and
accurate manner. This helps the search engines to decide how
relevant the page is to a particular search term. The more
relevant a page is, the higher it will rank in the results for
that search term.

3. Use your keywords in the HTML heading tags.
Heading tags (e.g. H1, H2, H3, etc.) also give the search engines
a big clue about how relevant the web page is to certain search
terms. So, as with title tags, you should ensure your heading
tags contain your keywords. As a bare minimum, every web page
should have one H1 tag that includes the same keywords that are
in the title tag.

4. Check the keyword density in your website
text. The frequency at which your keywords appear in
your website’s body text (known as keyword density) also helps
search engines to match your web pages to relevant search terms.
How often keywords should be used is rather a moot point among
SEO experts. Some believe that stuffing a page with keywords is
beneficial to search engine rankings, while others think that
‘keyword stuffing’ is viewed as a form of spam by the search
engines. As a general rule, for a web page that has about 400-600
words of body content, use the main keyword once in the first
paragraph, once in the last paragraph, and once somewhere in
between.

5. Use your keywords in ‘alt’ tags. Every image
on your website should have an alternate text, or ‘alt’ tag. This
is not only important for accessibility but it also provides you
with another opportunity to let the search engines see your
keywords. Alt tags should describe what the image is. Make sure
you include your keywords in these image descriptions.

If you follow these five SEO actions for beginners, your website
should stand a better chance of ranking well in the search
engines.

If you need any help with SEO or any of your internet marketing needs, please feel free to Contact Me