SEO is a big topic and many web site owners are overwhelmed, feeling like it’s simply too much to handle, getting “fire hosed” with information from consultants. As a result, they look for bite sized chunks of information – tactics. Sometimes these individual tactics can make a dent in the problem, but not considering the overall picture including current site, competition, online marketplace, resources, ongoing marketing and analytics can result in lost opportunity and bottom line lost revenue.
The smart answer to the question about “top three SEO tactics” to focus on starts with an evaluation of the site in question to see if there are any immediate, high impact opportunities such as unblocking search engine spiders from crawling the site or assessing the content management system and any other major possible barriers to getting crawled and included.
Assuming those questions are solved and the market for the web site is well understood, the next thing is to make sure the site content is targeting the right keywords. Understanding what potential customers are looking for and applying that insight with a content creation and promotion strategy is instrumental for optimal search engine visibility.
The second thing to do is to apply the keyword research you’ve done to the web site and content being published to the web. Make sure each web page contains unique, descriptive text using relevant and popular keywords. The key on-page influences of keywords on search engine rankings include:
* Keywords in the title tag
* Keywords in text links to your web pages from other relevant web sites
* Keywords in the copy of your web pages
* Keywords used in links between pages of your site
The last thing I’d recommend (I guess this is 4, not 3 tips) is to tell other sites related to your topic about your site and attract links. The bottom line recommendation with link building is to create content worth linking to. But then you need to tell other web sites about it or they won’t know to link to you. This is especially true with new web sites.
Be a resource for your industry and create content of value to potential customers to make the job of finding, evaluating and buying your products/services easier. It’s also important to create the kind of content that other influential web sites and blogs will want to link to.
The top 3 or 4 things to focus on for improved search visibility (in my opinion) are:
- Make sure search engines have no difficulty in finding and understanding your web site
- Research the keywords that are most meaningful for your customers
- Use those keywords in your content
- Create content and promote content that makes it easy for customers to buy and easy for influential to link to your resources