In which I become an SEO ninja: ten SEO tips

Some time ago I was a test-case. Exciting as I have never been unusual in any way shape or form (Granny M would disagree because I am her baby and therefore very special and so on….*waves* Hi Mum!)

But on that day I was unusual, a test-case, a trend-setter. Along with a dozen other bloggers from the food and parenting arenas, I got to try out the TOTs 100 latest brain child: the SEO summit. That day, people of the internet, and friends-of-my-mum *waves*, I became an #seoninja.

In this case, the Mr Myagi (I know I am mixing my martial arts references and for that I apologise but it’s my blog, ‘kay?) was Dave Sottimano, who was not only an excellent teacher, but also (and I’m quoting directly here) ‘very easy on the eye’. I know! Shame on me in the modern era to be making such a retro statement but let me tell you that if you are going to be spending 4 hours talking SEO semantics, you might as well be doing it with someone who is nice to focus on.

Now, you didn’t start reading this post because you wanted to hear about Dave’s good looks and dreamy accent. So let me get down to it. I have been learning SEO ‘on the job’ over the past couple of years. Some of my posts do very well and some not so well, and I know that it has a lot to do with how I promote them.

And so here are ten SEO tips I picked up from the SEO Ninja Summit that may help you.

1. Write unique descriptions for key pages with no duplicate titles, meta-descriptions or anchor text. Google does do a good job of filling in snippets automatically, so you can leave most pages blank except for main landing pages.

2. Snippets are where the action is. If you don’t know what snippets are, check underneath the title and link in a Google search. To ensure that the user clicks on your link rather than others, use keywords to encourage readers (these will appear in bold). It looks better for Search Engines, though it doesn’t affect PR.

3. SEO will ask for links from the homepage rather than individual post pages. This is because in 99% of websites the links that constitute page rank come from homepages. PageRank (PR) is determined by how many inbound links you have coming to your site. If there are two comparable sites, Google will give greater search ranking to pages with higher PR.

4. Heading tags: make use of headings. These will break a post up to make it more readable, but will also help you to create a post that is more rounded. If you answer more than one question with your post, give more information, you will rank for more web queries and thus gain greater page views. The same is true of images: more screenshots/relevant images give greater authority to your post in the eyes of the algorithm.

5. Make sure you fill in all the categories: meta name description, alt tag on your images, snippet. Give them all your attention, as the use of keywords in these areas of your post will give you greater searchability and therefore greater authority.

6. To the casual observer, Google Authorship relates to the author image and snippet that appears in a Google search listing. But the rel=author code may well become significant with the continuing growth of Google +. Google has it’s own step-by-step guide to claiming authorship, and you should check out Geekalicious post on Using SEO Effectively.

7. Keep keywords towards the beginning of a post. The key is more keywords: the snippets and terms that others use in search engines to find articles including yours that match their search terms. Google Suggest is a great tool for helping you with keywords and headings to include in your posts that help you rank well in searches for any given topic. This gives you greater click throughs and link-backs, all helping to build your authority in a topic.

8. IFTTT.com: spending time familiarising yourself with If This Then That will help all your promotion through social media. It really is a must-use tool. And I will get round to using it….

9. Guest posting is the easiest way to get a link-in to your site (something that counts towards your page rank): when you write a Guest Post, remember not to overdo the anchor text to your site. Inserting some of your own links at the end of the post with your Author Bio is the simplest way of including a link-back in text that you post on someone else’s site.

10.  When people make commentary about SEO, take it with a pinch of salt: there is always some good in an industry.

 

Want to know more? The Tots 100 is the place to learn SEO.