SEO Best Practices

K n o w s B e s t A Discussion of SEO Best Practices and How to Use Them Hall Web Services

Who We Are Hall Web Services www.hallme.com 10+ Years in Business Over 80 Search Marketing Clients 98% of Customers "Very Satisfied" Fred Greenhalgh aka “my sidekick” Internet Marketing/Communications Manager [email_address] Kasi Ehlers Organic Search Specialist [email_address] &

Ask Us Questions! * Use GoToWebinar “Chat” or “Ask a Question” * Twitter with #SEOvision tag

What We Expect You To Know:

What "SEO" Means (Search Engine Optimization)

The importance of having a site that does well in search engines

What “keywords” are (and you should also know what the keywords are for your business/website)

What You'll Learn:

An overview of what the basic SEO “best practices” for on page SEO elements

How to apply them to a website

How Does It Rank?

How Best Practices Work

On Page SEO Optimization

(What the heck is that?)

“ On page” just refers to the elements, text, and content of a web page.

“ On page SEO” means optimizing this information so that it is easier for search engines to find those web pages.

If you're unsure as to what these elements are, have no fear! That is what we will be discussing today.

Important Elements of a Web Page for SEO

HTML code that provides information about each web page:

Title Tag

H1 Headline

META Description

META Keywords

ALT Image Attribute

Source Code of a Web Page

Title Tag

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORANT THINGS A SEARCH ENGINE LOOKS AT!

5 to 12 words in length (or 65 characters)

Use the keywords that describe the content of that specific page

Title Tags should be unique for each of the different web pages of your website

BAD TITLE TAG The title of this web page is: “Home – A WebsiteBuilder Website”

GOOD TITLE TAG The title of this web page is: “Maui Condos, Vacation Rental Villas, Hawaii Vacations”

GOOD VS. BAD TITLE TAG

H1 Tag

Here is what it looks like on a web page

(it's a heading):

Maui Vacation Rentals, Condos, Hawaii Vacations

Explore all of our glorious vacation rentals, condos, and other properties for your Hawaiian vacation.

H1 Tag

This is the HTML code for a “heading” in the content on a web page

Straight from the horse's (Google's) mouth:

“ The Google ranking algorithm dictates that if you're using a <h1> tag, then the text in between this tag must be more important than the content on the rest of the page. Here's a quick example:

<h1>Google sees this text as more important</h1>

<p>... than this text</p>”

Use the keywords that describe the content of that page – be specific

Can be similar to the title tag of the page

Bad H1 Good H1 Maui Vacation Rentals, Condos, Hawaii Vacations Explore our beautiful Maui vacation rentals, condos... Welcome to our Vacation Site We specialize in vacations.

META Description Tag often appears here

META Description Tag

Description of the web page

Used to describe what the web page is about

Google often uses the description tag as the “snippet” of the web page in the search results

Important place to use keywords of the page due to the "bolding" that occurs in the visual snippet of the search results:

Bad META Description Good META Description Welcome to our vacation website. We specialize in vacations. Vacation rentals in Maui including condos and vacation villas.

META Keywords Tag

Hidden from web users except when a web page's source code is viewed.

It's a tag in the HTML code that contains the keywords of a web page (2 or 3 most important terms)

Google and other search engines ignore because of previous abuse

Yahoo! does still use it to a very small degree, but Yahoo! Search technology will be replaced by Bing next year.

I am personally phasing it out due to it's diminished value.

Alt IMG Attribute

The text used to describe an image on a web page

(Not visible to the eye unless you mouse over an image in Internet Explorer or right-click and view “Properties”)

Text-voice software for visually impaired uses this text

Search engines can index the alt IMG text that is supplied

Use 1 or 2 keywords in your alt IMG attribute to help contribute to web page's relevancy for those search words

Bad Alt IMG Attribute Good Alt IMG Attribute “ Missing” Maui Vacation Rentals – Aloha Villa

Recap of SEO Best Practices Title Tag : - most important element - use 2-3 keywords - unique for each web page H1 Headline : - “heading” in content - use keywords - can be similar to title tag META Description : - description of web page - use keywords for web page- will be bold in search results META Keywords : - contains the keywords targeted on web page - I don't recommend using it (Google doesn't look at it) ALT Image Attribute : - text description of an image, use keywords - search engines & voice readers can process the text

Learn More!