The document discusses top SEO techniques for improving search engine optimization and rankings. It explains that the key techniques include on-page factors like meta tag coding, keyword-optimized content and URLs, and off-page factors like link building and social media integration. Specific techniques covered include meta titles and descriptions, header tags, alt tags, XML site maps, internal linking, and fixing errors like duplicate content or broken links. The goal of these techniques is to provide relevant information to search engines to increase traffic from organic search results.

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The holy grail of marketing is now ranking high in search engine results pages
(SERPs). With a reported 93% of considered purchases, (both consumer and
business) using a search engine1, no wonder marketers are focused on techniques
for improving search authority. Techniques most often referred to as search engine
optimization, or SEO.
Studies prove that ranking or position for a particular search term significantly impacts
click-through for that result, and subsequent traffic2. In simple terms, if you are not
in the first few search result positions for a keyword, your chances of click-through
traffic drop precipitously. Page 2 and lower results have very little click-through.
Sure you can pay for high search results. But Paid Search is expensive, and not
sustainable (it vanishes if you stop paying). Rule-of-thumb is to build or retrofit your
website (or blog) with proper SEO techniques and search optimized content and you
will improve organic (also called natural) search results.
The consensus among SEO experts is that search authority, and yes search rankings
are driven by on-page coding, search-optimized content, and off-page factors
including link building and social media. So without further adieu, following are the
key search engine optimization techniques, at-a-glance, followed with greater
detail, and an example!
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URL Structure and Redirects
Meta tag coding and Page Titles
Blog and Social Media Integration
Site Maps and Text Links
Link building, Reciprocal Links and Inter-Linking
Keyword content or “landing” pages
SEO errors (broken links, duplicate content)
A key SEO determinant is URL or domain structure—specifically, keyword-rich
sub-domains. When linking to website sub-pages that are often served dynamically
via databases, the URL that appears on the “http” line often includes obscure
database code with multiple back slashes or symbols. To eliminate this search engine
hurdle, ideal URL structures use the base domain name, along with simple keywords
or keyword phrases in place of this coding.
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3. Next, a simple but often neglected SEO technique is setting-up URL redirects, or
more specifically, a 301 permanent redirect for your website. Search engines will
index both the www.domainname.com and domainname.com versions of your
website. Without a redirect in place, this scenario creates what is known as duplicate
content, thus diluting the search authority of both the WWW and non-WWW version
of your website.
Also called a canonical redirect, the 301 permanent redirect (redirect) is vital to
proper search engine optimization and improved rankings. A simple way to test
whether your website has a 301 redirect in place is to type “yourdomain.com” into
your browser address bar then hit “Enter”. If the URL does not automatically change
to “www.yourdomain.com”, then the redirect is NOT in place to resolve canonical
issues and, therefore, is not optimized for the search engines. The redirect must be
done at the hosting server level, and can often be completed via hosting tech
support requests. It does not matter which version (WWW vs. non-WWW) of your
website you redirect to, you just need to pick one and stick to it.
Another type of redirect is the 302 redirect. If you have multiple domains purchased
for your site (variations of your domain name), and want to make sure that no matter
which domain a person types in, it will go to the domain that you chose, you need to
set up a 302. So, if you recently changed your company name and have revamped
your website, you may want to set up a 302 redirect from www.companyA.com
to www.companyB.com. This way, if someone forgets you changed your company
name, they will be redirected to the new website.
Invisible to the user, Meta tags are HTML (or XHTML) coding for descriptions of
a webpage’s contents, thus enabling the search engine to correctly index the web
page’s content. Meta tag coding is the most fundamental SEO technique, and critical
to most search results. Meta tag coding includes Meta title and descriptions, Header
tags and Alt or image tags. In the past, Meta keywords were used, but are now less
important. There is also reason to believe that meta descriptions are no longer
necessary and that search engines use the first couple lines of content as your
description. However, it is still good practice to write a meta description.
During a search, Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions are displayed in the Search
Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Each webpage should have a keyword-rich Meta
title, approximately 70 characters, and Meta description (also relevant and specific
to the page), approximately 160 characters in length including spaces. Header tags
are brief headlines that should be coded at the top or header position of each page.
Blogs will actually take your blog title and use that as the Header (H1) tag.
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4. Alt tags are the file names, image titles or descriptions for images and links
contained on your website. These are useful when search engines index or “crawl”
your website since the engines automatically turn off images and read only text,
including file names. Therefore, instead of image filenames such as “DCP0003.jpg,”
images should be re-named to reflect important keywords as they relate to your
page, file or picture, such as “SEO-Marketing.jpg,” to increase search results.
Blogs and Social Media channels are now, more than ever, major determinants of
Search Engine Results. For the best search engine marketing results, make sure that
your website links to your blog and social profiles. Likewise, make sure you link out
to your website and blog through your social profiles, and provide reciprocal links
amongst your social profiles. Ideally the blog is a primary navigation link, and a
sub-domain of the site (ex. www.sitename.com/blog).
Two of the most important determinants of website search authority are indexed
pages and links to your website—blogs support both. Each blog post gets indexed as
a new page, along with blog roll reciprocal links. Blogs provide the platform and
distribution channel for content that should relate to the keywords and topics you
seek greater search authority for. And blogs integrate nicely with social sharing tools
and counters. Finally, blog software includes many free SEO features, along with
numerous SEO plug-ins or widgets that are free or low cost. More on the topic of
blogging will be covered in our blogging best practices white paper.
Brand websites and blogs should place social icons with hyperlinks to key social
media profiles including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, Share or
Bookmark icons are also important to building search authority. Counter tools like the
AddThis tool, which include counters for Tweets, Facebook Likes, Google+1s and total
shares help support and encourage social sharing, ultimately improving your search
authority and building backlinks.
Site Maps are yet another SEO best practice. Typically, a site map is a text link
placed in the footer of the web page, and links to a sub-page with a simple outline of
website content and sub-links. This is often called a Site Index. In the same location,
redundant text navigation links for all primary navigation should be placed. Site Maps
and Text Links make search engines’ jobs easier, allowing them to index all of your
website content and sub-links of a single site map, rather than trying to figure out
the structure of your site without one. This then allows them to determine the
ranking of your pages and overall domain. XML Site Maps, which are formatted files
with all links to your website and look like a bunch of HTML code, should be
submitted to key search engines including Google, Yahoo and Bing. Google actually
allows you to submit this through Google Webmaster Tools immediately.
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5. Link-building, Reciprocal Links and Inter-Linking are key aspects to SEO. Why?
Because most search engines rank websites based on how many links are pointing
to that site. The practice of dedicating a website sub-page or pages to industry links,
and/or requesting reciprocal links supports link-building. Link sources include paid
and free directories like Yahoo, Best of the Web and DMOZ. Industry blogs,
publications, associations and trade shows are also great sources.
Bookmarks to your website or pages are a source
of links. Place Share and Bookmark widgets on your
website (we recommend AddThis), and bookmark
your website sub-pages with popular Bookmarking
sites like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Reddit.
The process of bookmarking and sharing your links
helps build backlinks to content on your site. The
more quality back-links you have, the better – so it is
important to have others share your content. Finally,
it is also important to practice inter-linking, which
involves creating text hyperlinks within your website’s
pages, to other relevant web pages on YOUR site
(not other sites).
Before you share your website and post it onto the worldwide web, be sure your
website content includes keywords that correspond to the Meta tags for those pages,
or even dedicated landing pages or sub-pages for your site’s top keywords. As
referenced previously, these pages should use keywords in URLs, title-tags, Alt tags
and meta code to ensure the best search results. When you are creating individual
pages, think to yourself “What would I search for to get to this information? Which
keyword would I plug in the most?” and build your page’s content around that keyword.
Throughout the process of maintaining your website and practicing good SEO, you
need to identify and fix various errors. The more errors on a site, the more the
search engines will penalize your site. The 404 error, which means ‘Page not Found’
more often than not results from a broken link on your website. Sometimes, these
are easy to find when you happen to be browsing through your site. On the other
hand, once your website is built out with thousands of pages it can be difficult to
pin-point which links are broken. Various tools are available for you to check this, such
as SEOmoz (seomoz.org) and the broken link checker (http://brokenlinkcheck.com).
Another common SEO error is duplicate content. Search engines are smart. They
know if you are posting duplicate pages with the same content, and only changing
the title. They also penalize you if two or more pages have the same title. So,
instead of wasting your time doing this and getting only one of those pages indexed
by search engines, always make sure that each page is unique.
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6. Below is the Hot Potato Social Media homepage with numbered references to SEO features.
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Keywork-rich page title, or Title Tag
Keyword-rich URL or domain structure
Website navigation based on keyword analysis
Social sharing including hyperlinks to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn,
bookmarking and related
5. Interlinking of text to other pages
6. Image Alt Tags
7. Not shown, proper meta-coding, site maps, URL redirects, Keyword density
of page content
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7. Go, Go SEO!
With a Search Engine Optimized website, organic or natural search results will flourish. There are several options for measuring search authority and search engine optimization (SEO). We prefer and recommend Google Analytics, but this does require
installation of Google Analytics tracking code. Certainly test keywords with search
engines to measure your search engine results page (SERP) placements. A free and
robust measurement tool is Hubspot’s Marketing Grader.
Sources:
1 Marketo - http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2012/04/the-cmo-guide-to-inbound-marketing-infographic.htmlt
2 Search Engine Watch - http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2215868/53-of-Organic-Search-Clicks-Go-to-First-Link-Study
About Hot Potato
Based in Naperville, IL outside of Chicago, Hot Potato Social Media is a full service
social media marketing agency that helps companies and brands implement and
manage social media and other inbound marketing programs for measurable, and
often profound sales results. For more information, check out the website at
www.HotPotatoSocialMedia.com, or call 630-868-5062.
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