SEO Mindsets 101
SEO comes into play the second you start building your web site, not as an after thought. The whole purpose of search engine optimization is to develop your site for your user, to develop and enhance the positive lead conversion aspects of your site, so that you can make money for years to come. You need to take into consideration such things as web development, navigation, correct code use, content, and the design/layout of your site.
Web Development
Developing the web site should start out as a framework of thought that puts together the basic pages you’re planning on including on your site. Also, you should continue adding more pages that your site will need based on your target audience. So, if you have a site that’s geared towards real estate, you may want to consider having basic sections such as your home page, about us, testimonials, and listings. Internal pages can include significantly enhanced FAQ pages, pages with informative content geared towards your local market, and even additional pages targeted to relocation clients if that’s a primary target. It all depends on what your market research revealed when you performed your market analysis while setting up your business.
Navigation
Your menu is what your users and search engines are going to be using to navigate through your web site. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to provide at least one text-based navigation menu for your site so the search engines can crawl your site with ease. The text will also be used as a visual cue for your users to navigate your site. You don’t want “mystery meat navigation” (a term coined by Vincent Flanders, author of the book Web Sites That Suck) to be a deterrent for people. Mystery Meat Navigation is navigation that includes no text whatsoever to describe where the button is going to, and anything else that is not immediately clear about where that button will take the user. If you must use graphics for your navigation, at least make sure that you use some text to provide information about where that button will take your user.
Correct Code Use
This doesn’t necessarily mean writing correct W3C valid code. Currently, search engine algorithms don’t really care about that. Instead, this means making sure that you have a decent code to text ratio. The code to text ratio measures how much code there is behind your site compared to how much text is on the page. The more text on the page than code, the better. This means that search engines will have an easier time processing your pages. The easier you make your pages for the search engines (and your user) to read, the better results you can get!
Design and Layout
Search Engine Optimization is but one small part of the entire marketing puzzle. An important part of converting leads is the presentation of your site! Think about it: would you buy from a web site that uses canned language and content you’ve seen before? Would you want to buy from a site that uses the same graphics that are on every other web site out there? Would you want to buy from a web site that causes you think harder about where to click to get to the purchase form? These issues, and others, are why it’s so important to differentiate yourself from your competition. Don’t do what everyone else is doing! Do something that is totally different that solves your clients’ problems in a completely different way!
The latest graphics, Flash techniques, and search engine optimization methods are but a small part of the whole puzzle of SEO. Coding, usability, navigation, and other techniques are also smaller slices of a much larger pie. Despite the latest popular ideals, SEO is not about creating controversy or developing exposure at the expense of other people. SEO is not a set it and forget it deal. SEO is about building a long term business, healthy relationships, and developing a solid client base that will help you make money year after year. You don’t have to make money at anyone else’s expense. Doing so will not win you friends, the very relationships that will help determine your success or failure in this industry.
About Meta Tags
You’ll see that there are two main META tags that you absolutely MUST have optimized on your site: the Meta Title, and the Meta Description. The Meta title will tell potential visitors the nature of the site. You have to do this with 50-60 characters or less!! So therein lies the initial challenge of the Title. Initial challenge? You didn’t think I would let you off that easy, did you?
The next one is the Meta Description. This one will provide a brief description of your web site. Google allows for 160-200 characters or less in the Meta Description, so you absolutely must be talented at writing basic ad copy. This will serve to pique the interest of potential visitors to your site. Remember, you are competing against thousands of results for your specific keywords, and you WILL need to spend a lot of time coming up with specifics that will put the competition to shame. Here are separate listings w/information for each Meta Tag for easier reference:
Meta Title – This meta information tag is limited to 50-60 characters or less. It’s only meant to serve as a brief hook for the site, so it should be as short as possible while at the same time conveying dynamic verbiage.
Meta Description – This meta information is limited to 160-200 characters or less. It’s important in that it’s a short ad for your site. You need to provide a description of your site that tells potential visitors what your site does and why they should visit, all within 160 characters. A challenging feat, to say the least!
Meta Keywords – Search engines don’t pay attention to meta keywords as much as they once did, although it won’t hurt optimizing this area. You want to keep your keyword repetition very low, 3-5 times for repetitions of specific keywords at the most. Why? Because if you attempt to overload your meta keywords, search engines may penalize and even ban your site for spam attempts. Not a good thing! So remember, 3-5 times should be the maximum that a specific keyword is repeated.