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A Very Basic Introduction to SEO – Streeten Design

Getting your website to rank high in search engines is hard, we know… but there are a few simple things that can give impressive results.

If you want more friends, SEO can solve all of your problems. For those who don’t know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.

Using tried and tested methods to increase the number of visitors to your website, you eventually obtain a good ranking in the search results. It sounds very confusing but so does explaining to someone how to ride a bike!

A few things to help you sound like you know about SEO:

Keywords in SEO

A great way of getting the search engines to know your website is relevant is to put specific, related keywords in your URL (website address) and throughout your website pages. The practice of identifying which phrases are appearing on search engines, and then including them within your site, will quickly attract the people who are searching around these specific topics.

If your keywords don’t match up to the overall subject of your website, you could be missing valuable traffic. Better to attract the right people who will actually be interested in your site.

Title Tags in SEO

Once your keywords are sorted you have to think about title tags, which are very important for getting your website recognised. Title tags are the first place that search engines look, to try and understand what your website page is all about.

This is displayed as a little preview snippet for a given website in the google results page. If your title tags are relevant and the search engines like them, then they will have a greater visibility which generally means you’ll get a higher click-through rate (more people clicking on your listing).

Meta Description Tags

Meta description tags, aren’t quite so relevant to search engine rankings, but you still need them to make sure your website is noticeable on the results page. It is very important for gaining user click-through from SERPS (search engine results page). The short paragraph that you write is a good opportunity to give an overview of what your website is for; ensuring you keep it relevant will let searchers know its the right place for them.

Also if a keyword is in your metadata (all the complex code stuff that you don’t see!), it will become bolded in the search results, successfully calling more attention to your website.

Naturally, the more people liking, reading  and hanging out on your website the higher it will climb in the search engines.

Content Title

It’s a good idea to include your page title towards the top of the page, as it is beneficial for your readers and a good way for search engines to pick up on it. This helps attach more relevance to the overall meaning of the page.

Additionally you should make sure these titles appear in the correct part of the webpage code (HTML – Hypertext Mark Up Language) which tells the robots going through your site where they are.

Links from other websites to your own website is a sign that you are credible and worth talking about… and it doesn’t go unnoticed by the search engines either.

Getting other websites to link your website is not always that easy. If a company says that they will link your site, you should always return the favour, as most of the time it can mutually benefit both of you.

This is just the very basics of Search Engine Optimisation, but sometimes just completing a few of these points will boost your overall ranking.

It could be the difference between page 1 and page 2…and you know where you want to be?

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