This is the second of a three part blog series on how to be your own best SEO guru.
In part 1, we discussed the basics of SEO and the initial steps to plan for a search engine optimized website. Today, we will learn about keywords, meta descriptions and title tags.
Keywords:
A “keyword” is an index key of a record or document. “Keywords” are the words that are most frequently searched on the web. Ex: SEO is a keyword that is searched for 11.1 million times per month globally. So, how can you find the keywords that make the most sense for your business? Google provides a free keyword tool. Register for a free Google Ad words account to access the keyword tool. Start by listing possible keywords that you think people may use to search for products and services offered by your company. Run those keywords through the keyword tool to find the volume of monthly searches. This gives you an idea how often and how many times people are searching for those particular words. The keyword tool also suggests keywords if you choose a category (Ex: Retailers & General Merchandise). For the next step, choose a dozen or less keywords that appeared in the list of most frequent searches. A link to Google’s keyword tool is given below:
https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool
How to use Keywords in your content:
It is important that you use the keywords you selected in the content on your website. Make sure that your keywords naturally fit into your content. Don’t try to just ram the keywords into your content. Also, make sure you don’t use the same keyword twice in a particular content page or web page. Once you are done, check to see if your content reflects the authenticity and originality of your business. Make sure to spread the keywords across all of your content/web pages.
Meta descriptions:
Meta descriptions provide an explanation about the web page that is being displayed. Meta descriptions are important to ensuring that your website is optimized for web searches. They are also important to help generate interest amongst users who click on your listing. Keep the meta description under 150 characters.
Title tags:
A title tag is one of the important factors that a search engine considers when ranking your pages. Make sure to use a title tag that is relevant for the content and the page. Make sure to write your title tags in fewer than 70 characters.
Example: This is one of the Google search results when a user searches for a CRM application that integrates with Google Apps.
The text highlighted in yellow is a meta description and the text highlighted in red is a title tag of the mogocrm.com home page. It was our goal that viewers would know that MOGO CRM seamlessly integrates with Google Apps. As you can see, the meta description and title tag support that goal.
Come back tomorrow for part 3. I will talk about the importance of head tags and alt tags. I will also provide some recommendations and best practices on how to organize your web pages, meta descriptions, head tags, title tags, keywords and alt tags in a spreadsheet.
