While there are enough highly technical SEO techniques to make your head spin, sometimes you need to step back, take a breath and remember that in the end, you need only focus on two main factors in your quest for the ultimate search engine optimization: keywords and backlinks. Whether you are a veteran of the SEO wars, or a relative newbie, or whether you are optimizing a brand new site or just doing some maintenance on an existing site, focus your attention on keywords and backlinks and you will soon be able to see measurable results.
Why Keywords are, Well, Key!
In-depth research is critical to your final short-list of keywords you will optimize your site for. Your keywords must be absolutely relevant to what you do, the services you offer or the products you sell. In fact, relevance must be your highest priority, ahead of those keywords which appear to have the highest number of searches. While “narrow” keywords may get fewer searches, they are immensely more valuable than a generic keyword. If you get a user to your website, then they find it was not at all what they were looking for, obviously they won’t stay. With highly focused, extremely narrow keywords, your users will naturally be more interested in exactly what you have to offer.
Placing Your Keywords for Maximum Results
The location of your keywords is almost as important as the keywords themselves. Keywords placed in the title page, headings and first paragraphs—in other words, above the fold—are much more important than those placed at the bottom of the page. Additionally, having your keywords in your URL and domain name is far more important than having them in your page copy. If all things are roughly equal between you and a direct competitor, but the competitor has the critical keywords in the URL, their ranking will almost certainly be higher than your own.
When you are determining your URL, remember that while having five keywords in it might be good for SEO, it’s not particularly good for a user to be able to remember, so strike a balance. Although writing something in the title tag is not strictly mandatory, if you leave it empty, the title bar of the browser will read something like “untitled document,” which is not particularly impressive to your users.
Heading Keywords
While headings certainly separate your paragraphs and subtopics, from an SEO standpoint, having as many headings on your page which have your top-rated keywords lends itself in a positive manner to higher rankings. Remember, though, that headings which are inordinately long are not conducive to page readability. Headings are usually bolded and, in some cases in a larger font, so keep the headings clear, concise, and keyword-rich.
Checking Your Keyword Density
Once your keywords are chosen, you must ensure your articles have optimal keyword density; while it is not as much of an SEO factor, it does measure how relevant your page is. It is recommended that you strive for a keyword density of 3-7% for your primary keywords, and 1-2% for your less important keywords. There are keyword density checkers you can find on the web if you are unsure of your density. Try optimizing for 5-10 keywords, as any more will only cause chaos in your copy. You never want your site articles to sound contrived or appear to be keyword-stuffed as this can garner you Google penalties.
Now, Add in Some High-Quality Backlinks
Once your keyword strategy is firmly in place, you will want to focus on getting incoming links from other websites. If these backlinks are high-quality and extremely relevant to your site, it will signal Google that yours is an important website, and your rankings will naturally increase. Track your results at least monthly, and you will see how these two simple techniques can vastly increase your search engine optimization.
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