4 SEO Tips for Beginners

Conduct Research

This is the biggest tip that I can give. Conduct research on your industry and what exactly are the most popular keywords for your product or service. I recommend using Google Keyword Planner (Must have a Google account to access) to conduct your research. There are many other websites that can help but Google Keyword Planner is the best for finding exact keywords and keyword phrases. The first step after logging in will be to enter your industry, product or service into the keyword filter to filter results for the term you are searching. (Pictured below)

After clicking enter, click on Keyword Ideas

This will organize all relevant keywords for the term that you searched. I recommend clicking on monthly searches to filter the highest searched terms for the month. Not all keywords listed will be relevant for your business. Just because it is a highly searched term in your industry, does it apply to your business? Ask yourself that question for every keyword. Write down five to ten keywords that are best suited for your business and website.

*Note: The results shown for monthly searches are for national searches and not local*

One Keyword Per Page

Now that we have our list of keywords picked out, we can begin placing them into our website. But what keyword should I use and on what page? That is for you to decide but have your keyword be related to the content that is currently on the page. By focusing one keyword per page, it tells Google (or any other search engine) that the page is talking about the keyword you are optimizing for. The problem arises when you try to optimize for more than one keyword. It confuses Google as to what the page is about. Is it keyword 1 or keyword 2. This will hurt your rankings for that page. Having clear and concise content in line with one keyword will allow Google to better index your page.

Too Little/Too Much

Now that you have picked a keyword for the webpage, you can begin to place the keyword inside the content. You want to place the keyword naturally inside the content but do not exceed over four percent of keyword density. (Keywords/total word count) By having a keyword density over four percent, the search engines will black list your page. This means they will not rank your page because you are trying to cheat the system by placing too many keywords inside of a page. (Keyword stuffing) The flip side of keyword stuffing is not having enough of the keyword inside the page. By not having it listed enough, you run the risk of the keyword not getting indexed by the search engines.

Optimizing Images

Another way to increase the keyword density and fully optimize your web page is to optimize the text in your images. Search engines can not read images, instead, they read the alternate text (Alt text) inside of the images. Simply insert the keyword you are optimizing for into the alt text of the image. Using alt tags is probably the best way for your ecommerce products to show up in search engine image and web searches.

All four of these steps are in the tool box for SEO strategists. They are the foundation to your SEO strategy and campaign. Proximo Marketing Strategies can help you get started by designing and executing a well-formed local SEO strategy that has long-lasting results. Contact us for a free evaluation and we’ll tell you how you stack up to your competition in search results and what you need to do to overtake them once and for all.