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Search engine optimization (SEO) is webspeak for designing your website to be easy to find by search engines like Google. It includes some core foundational ideas that are relatively practical to grasp yet can quickly get very complicated. Gurus galore abound in this arena and it is a changing and esoteric business.

Today, we are going to stick to the basics. Once you get those down, you can keep growing into more intense areas of study if you’d like, but my goal is to start you at the beginning.

To keep it straightforward, here are the top ideas to wrap your head around:

• Content Is Queen

Having sufficient amounts of content – words on your website – is crucial. Flashy graphics can look cool, but they don’t attract attention from search engines. Strive for 250-400 words of direct, meaty content at the top of your website (called “above the fold”). Keep the sentences focused and sensible, not just a string of words that people use to search (called “keywords”).

• Pictures Don’t Talk

Pictures add interest and attractiveness to your site; however, they are like blank cubes to search engines. When you add pictures, be sure to add keyword rich description tags that describe the pictures and add additional content for the search engine spiders to find and index. Depending upon how your website is designed, you either do this through your photo insertion tool or via photo tags upon saving the file. Ask your webmaster or contact me if you have questions. I’ll help you.

• Tags are Helpful

Meta-tags are helpful to your site, but the most important thing to add is a strong description. You usually add this through your CSS style sheets, your template files, or, if you have a Wordpress site, you can use a plug in designed to help you add page titles and site tags. Don’t get caught up in learning all this stuff yourself – once you do it, you’ll know it and there are lots of people (like the high school kid down the street) that can help. Get help.

• Relevance Rules

When your site is relevant, it has a concise topic focus and directly related content. If your site is about dogs, you might talk about pets, animal training, various types of dogs, and maybe flea prevention, but not skyscrapers. Not even the Cocker Spaniel Building in NoPlace, USA. Don’t get too cute with words or slap on some other business you have all into one site. It will only water down your relevance and confuse the search engine spiders. Make it easy for them to understand what you mean.

This is just our first scratch at the surface of this deep subject. However, if you implement these few basics concepts, your website is much more likely to get better ranking. Better ranking will lead to more eyeballs on your site, which can then lead to more sales and exposure. And, well, it’s like tying your shoes. You aren’t necessarily going to win a marathon if you tie your shoes, but you’re surely more likely not to finish if you don’t.

Come back tomorrow for Part 2, where we will cover the following ideas:

• Link Building Works
• Spiders Don’t Have Credit Cards
• Traffic Doesn’t Equal Conversion
• Nobody’s Perfect – Keep Trying!

Together, we are stronger!
Vicki Flaugher, the original SmartWoman

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