You know how you’re an expert in your business, your industry and what your company does on a daily basis? Ever realize how often others don’t know what they don’t know? I found this out after meeting with several long time customers.

There is so much jargon in todays “digital world” from SEO, search engine marketing, digital marketing, web marketing, SEM, PPC, paid search, getting found online, interactive, Google Panda updates, Penguin updates, blah….blah…blah. What does it all mean and what can you do with it?

STOP, catch your breath and check this out. Optimizing your website is a process to continue to make it better, for the search engines AND your visitors. Here are some of the SEO basics, that I cover in nearly every single conversation about a website:

Each page should have a purpose, a keyword focus. Yes, different products, service offerings or markets served should each have their own page.

Basic on-page SEO elements:

  1. Page Title. Keep this 8-10 words, a sentence, not a bunch of keywords. This is the blue text that shows up in the Google search results and at the top of your browser.
  2. URL extension. Anything after the .com of your web address. The more you can keyword these when you create pages on your website, the better.
  3. H Tags – this is your headline on the page. You should have 1 main headline (H1), and you can have other sub-heads to break out the text, H2, H3, etc.
  4. Content. Copy, words on the page. Shoot for 150-300 words on each page. Your should use some version of your keyword phrases 3-5 times for every 100 words. If it seems too wordy to you, then it will be for your readers.
    • If you have a video on a page, great! Visitors love that. Still, try to transcribe or describe what’s happening in the video. The search engines love that!
  5. Meta description. In most content management systems, this should be a fairly easy area to fill in the blank. It’s a short description about that page. This text should be about 156 characters and include some call to action. This is what shows up in the search engine results.

Mindscape_Meta_Descriptions

These are the basics for your on-page SEO elements. You’ll find many other posts here to talk additional SEO tips you can do within your website. Along with many helpful articles, like 8 Key Elements to Get to The Top of Google. 

Questions? Head over to our SEO service page to learn more about our services.