A market has exploded for building your online presence, the acronym SEO (Search Engine Optimization has quickly become a common place term for marketing strategies. Before a business could attract new customers with an enticing ad in a newspaper or magazine - but now consumers are active and searching for services. There are only a handful of people that could put forth the true secret to SEO success, but I don't think Google or Bing would really appreciate them telling secrets. Now, let's learn how to improve your SEO.Gone are the days of meta keywords tagging your website. Google flat out announced this in late 2009. Meta descriptions are picked for the blurb about your website when it appears in a search. So, then, how can you easily boost your SEO when the game keeps changing? Analyze your site like a search engine crawler would. Off the bat your site should be as close as possible to being valid HTML and valid CSS. Secondly, check the accessibility of your website. SEO and web design has become more focused on semantics - does the flow of text makes sense? Are things properly labeled?
Crawl your page
Crawl your webpage like a search engine might
When I analyze a website, like my own, I use a piece of software called Screaming Frog SEO Spider. I plug in a URL and it will scan the index page and follow all links it can, much like a search engine. I use this tool to track 404 errors to set up 301 redirects when pages move. In one screen I can analyze every page title on my website along with that pages meta description. Unique page titles will improve your SEO while tailor meta descriptions act as your "advertisement" for the page within a search result.
Crawling a webpage like a search engine helps solve semantic and content structure issues. Using the data from crawling my web page I can see my top two "Heading One" tags and my top two "Heading Two" tags. The web is becoming semantic - both in how we view the web and in how we have been building it (that is a whole much longer discussion.) By properly utilizing heading tags your content can be structured in ways to improve your SEO. Think of how you might structure a text document, such as a proposal. You have section headings, and under those other titles you highlight to stand out.
A breakdown of H1 locations per page and text
This is my personal website, the site name is technically "Matt Glaman" and it is my "heading one" on each page. The next major heading is the content's title. One area I am not perfect at is utilizing my "header two" tags. But also I'm not out trying be a number one resource. Second level headings could be used to identify other major areas of your content.
Beyond these article there is the science of link building and keyword density and keyword "worth." That's where the finer battles of SEO take place. The areas covered in this article, however, are one of the most missed steps that can be taken to improve your SEO.
The next step
Has this article got you thinking? Want to get your site analyzed and possible do a refresh to improve your SEO and get to the forefront of your competition? Dooley & Associations, whom I am a developer for, specializes in marketing and SEO services.
Crawl your webpage like a search engine might
A breakdown of H1 locations per page and text