Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of improving your website's rank in search engine result pages such as Google and Yahoo. In this article, I will list some quick and easy techniques that can help you accomplish higher page rankings and increase traffic to your web site.

All SEO techniques can be divided into 2 main categories: on-page SEO techniques, and off-page SEO techniques.

On-page SEO

Step 1 - Page Title and URL

  • Use friendly URLs for your website's pages such as www.yourdomain.com/website-design and NOT your www.domain.com/page2.html
  • Check the length of your page title. If it’s under 50 characters then you should add an additional word. The maximum recommended length for page titles is 70 characters. Something thats related to your site such as ‘Shirts’, ‘Flowers’, ‘Web Design’, ‘Coupons’, ‘Envelopes’, or even a name of a local town or county would be a great addition.
  • Make sure your key phrase is at the beginning of your title. Rather than 'Website Temple - Search Engine Optimization' go for 'Search Engine Optimization by Website Temple'. Google prefers key phrases as close to the beginning of your title as possible.

Step 2 Meta Data

  • Keywords - Make the keywords specific to every page they are on. Ensure that your most important phrases are at the beginning.
  • Description - Make sure the main keyword you want your page found for is as close to the beginning of the description as possible. Ideally it should start in the first 3 words.

Step 3 - Good Content

  • Headings and Subheadings
    • Ensure you have only one h1 (heading 1) tag on each page. Subsequent headings can be wrapped around other heading tags such as (H2, H3, H4, H5, H6).
    • Check that every heading relates to your content directly below it. So if a heading contains a keyword, make sure this keyword is in the first sentence below the heading.
  • Internal Linking
    • When linking to other pages within your website, don’t just call them ‘products’, ’services’, ‘gallery’ etc. Try adding an additional word to these to describe the page the link goes to. Something like ‘Marketing Products’, ‘SEO Services’, ‘Web Design Gallery’. These describe the page that the link goes to in better detail.
  • External Linking
    • Links to high rankings sites that are relevant to the content of your page. This may be a link to a news website that talks about the same topic or even Wikipedia.

Off-page SEO

Step 4 - Inbound linking

  • Create quality traffic to your site via 3rd party websites - talk about your business and your website on forums that relate to your industry, blogs, etc… Quality inbound links will not only bring visitors to your site, they will also vastly improve your website ranking on major search engines as they will consider your website as popular and relevant.
  • Submit your website to directories and web galleries.