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7 basic ways to optimize your website for search engines
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There are a lot of tricks when it comes to SEO or search engine optimization, but here are some basics.
1. Know what you want
Before you begin optimizing your site for search engines, you need to know what kind of keywords or phrases you want your site to rank for. I usually make a list of the keywords I think my site relates to and then use Google's keyword research tool to see which ones have been searched for the most. I don't necessarily choose the most popular ones as ones I want to target as it can be hard to compete for those. I usually try to find keywords that have decent search amounts a low competition.
2. Title tag
This is in the <head> section of your html. Make sure the keyword or phrase your want to rank for is included here.
3. Meta tags
These tags are also in the <head> section of your html. The two you will want to use are the description and keywords tags. The description can be a sentence or two describing your website. The keywords tag is where you can list your keywords and phrases separated by commas.
4. Alt attributes
Whenever you have an image on your page, make sure to include a keyword or phrase that describes the image and uses one of your chosen keywords or phrases (don't keep using the same one throughout your whole web page).
5. Heading tags and bold
When search engines "crawl" your web page, heading tags and bold text let them know that what is in those tags is important. So another good place to put your targeted keywords and phrases would be within these kind of tags.
6. Title attributes for links
Kind of like the specifying an image attribute, you can also specify a link attribute. Yet again, another place to stick in some keywords and phrases.
7. Content
Wherever you have content on your site, make sure to include your keywords and phrases throughout it.
These 7 ways to optimize your site are just the beginning, but you would be suprised how many sites do not even follow these basic guidelines. The first step is by far the most difficult and time consuming, but it makes the flow and design of your site so much simpler when it is complete.
Peace,
Mike
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