Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making your site more visible to Web search engines. SEO practices are based on understanding how each search engine gathers and ranks search results. The primary goal of SEO is to increase the probability that your target audience can find your site when they perform a Web search.
While advanced SEO can be complicated, there are many basic SEO practices that require no special knowledge or skill. Use the suggested practices below to help your clients or prospective clients find you more easily.
- Identify a list of keywords your target audience might use as search terms. Focus on a list of 10 to 20 words that are very relevant to the content on your site. Having more keywords can be detrimental to your search ranking. You can add keywords for individual pages on your site on the Edit Pages page.
- Provide high-quality content. Ideally, your content should use some of your keywords. However, it is not advisable to "stuff" your content with keywords. Search engines may penalize sites which use keywords excessively.
- Add alternative (alt) text and titles for images. Some users cannot view site images, either because of a visual impairment or a technological limitation. Alt text is a brief description that displays in place of the image. Adding alt text for images can raise your rankings in search engine results.
- Update content on a regular basis. New content gives visitors a reason to come back to your site. It also can help your search engine rankings.
- Include keywords in headings, page titles, links, and in other prominent areas. Do this only in instances where it makes sense to do so.
- Make page file names relevant to the page content. Avoid generic names like page1, page2, etc., which do not provide a description of the content on the page.
- Limit the number of meta tags you use. Instead, use custom pages to create pages for niche markets.
