For the uninitiated, SEO can be a bit of a minefield. There are hundreds of sites out there offering SEO tips and techniques but treat advice with care – some SEO techniques can get you in trouble and may even result in you being banned from the search engines.

The good news is that there is no need to use “black hat” techniques to improve your page rankings. With a bit of common sense and some straightforward advice you can improve the chances of your site heading up the listings – and as we all know, in this day and age ensuring good visibility on the search engines should a crucial part of your marketing efforts.

There are a few basics to consider before launching into a major SEO overhaul of your site. Getting the following right is fundamental to your SEO efforts:

1. Page titles

The HTML page title is the first line of text in a search engine result. Your customers can see this, so it’s important that it reads well but it should also include your keywords as it plays a role in ranking.

2. Meta Tags

Once decisive in search engine rankings, meta tags now carry very little weight with search engines. However, they will aid your SEO efforts in the context of a broader campaign. Meta descriptions should be short, informative, aligned with your page title and include your keywords.

3. Page content

The words on your website pages play a decisive role in your search engine listings. While, search engine copywriting has become a profession in its own right, by and large you should focus on including priority keywords where possible. Don’t overdo it – three or four mentions every 250 words is about right.
Once you’ve considered these points, move on to the next elements in your SEO efforts:

4. Bold keywords (occasionally)

Use the HTML tags to highlight priority keywords throughout your site. Don’t go mental – choose one or two instances of a keyword on each page.

5. Site map

Whatever the size of your site you should think about having a site map. Make sure the site is linked to from every page on the site, and for smaller sites you can even add the site map to the footer on the bottom of each page. The bottom line is that you want the search engine robots to be able to find any page on your site within two clicks.

6. Linking

Everyone knows that inbound linking is important don’t they? The number of links to your site from other sites is an important factor in ranking your pages. However, the type and location of link is going to carry weight too – you need links from relevant content posted on relevant sites; you also need to place links from external sites throughout your site, not just on your home page.

7. Multiple domains

Separating out your content to specific subjects or sectors and creating new domains for each one could give you an opportunity to get better listings for each domain than you could manage for two. If you sell tyres and towbars for example, why not consider a different URL for each one?

8. Link titles

Consider the title of your link carefully – you can help paint a more detailed SEO picture for the robots by including relevant keywords in link titles.

9. Directory submissions

Dmoz.org and Yahoo! used to be the main targets. The former is free to submit but can take months to be listed. The latter now charges (quite a lot!) to be reviewed with no guarantees you will actually be listed – if you’ve got the budget it’s probably worth doing. Industry-specific directories may or may not charge and should be judged on their own merits.

10. Blog

A blog isn’t just a way of sending links back to your own site, it’s a way of showing your industry expertise and promoting your services in its own right. Running a blog can be time-consuming but generally you should look at making regular posts, encouraging discussion and keeping it to a specific area.

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