SEO in a Nutshell

Posted on 18 January 2010 | by Ryan Battles

I am amazed at all of the people out there claiming to be SEO specialists.  First of all, it is pretty easy to call yourself one, as there is no requirements to do so.  Secondly, I find it funny because all you ever need to know about SEO can be summarized in a quick blog post.  Now I do understand that on very large sites, an SEO "specialist" could be invaluable because of the sheer volume of work to be done, but for most basic websites, here is a quick primer on how to maximize your Search Engine Optimization.

Focus

I have had clients send me a list of no less than 300 keywords to target on their site.  While this type of ambition is admirable, it is hardly practical.  What we are looking for here is to seem like a "Very Important Result" to search engines like Google, and unless your site is rocking something amazing, it is ulikely that you will appear to be hot stuff for all 300 keyword phrases.  A better idea is to choose a keyword phrase or two, and go to town trying to optimize for those phrases. 

Utilize Titles

The titles in your page carry the most weight in telling Google what is important on your page.  The title of the page itself is a no-brainer (this is what appears at the very top of the browser window, and in your tabs).  The title of the page should state the chosen keywords. The second most important title to worry about is the "H1" title of the page.  This should also have your keyword phrase in it.

Repeat the Keywords in the Body

You should repeat the keyword phrase throughout the text of the body, but not so much that it becomes unreadable or unnatural.  This will turn off your readers, and people will be less likely to link to your site (we'll get to that).  Repeating a few times in natural places is good, and for extra credit, find a way to wrap the text with "strong" or "emphasized" tags, as these lend more credibility to your words.

Acquire Inbound Links

This is the hardest part of SEO.  If you can get a lot of sites to link to yours in a way that is not considered "against the rules" by search engines, you'll quickly rise to the top.  The best way to make this happen is to simply write good content.  There is no substitution for a great piece of information that others find useful.  In addition, make it easy for people to link to your site.  Utilize "Share This" buttons and other ways to make it easy for people to post links to your content.

Bonuses

The above tactics are going to be your bread-and-butter for SEO.  The following will be the icing on the cake:

1. Use valid code.  Code that validates against the W3C's recommendations is ranked higher than code that isn't.
2. Focus on fast load times.  Google has stated that it WILL rank faster loading sites before slower ones.

Now I suppose that those last two tips can be very involved, especially with large sites.  However, I wouldn't say that they are the job of an SEO specialist, but perhaps just a good programmer.