Common Sense Search Engine Optmization

Some would have you believe that the only route to search engine optimization is through tricks - the "black hat" stuff that's way too myserious and technical for mere mortals.

I believed it too, until I listened to a speech by a well-known SEO expert. Then I went straight to my "never seen" pages and got two of them to page 1 & 2 on Google within a week.

How? Well, first I did add more keywords. I tend to forget to use them, so had to go back through my copy and plug them in - where they made sense.

Pages that are keyword "stuffed" not only offend the search engines, they're so hard to read that no sensible person would get beyond the first paragraph. They read like "Sam asked me to drive Sam to the store because Sam wanted to buy new paint for Sam's kitchen."

Ugh - and yes, I have seen web pages that looked a lot like that!

So, the first common sense item is to use the keywords in places where they flow naturally with the copy.

I already knew that you should ad meta tags for description and keywords. What I didn't know until that day was that the title is ultra-important. And, in looking at the pages I visit, I've come to the conclusion that most people don't know that. The majority of pages either have the business name on every single page, or something really exciting, such as: "home."

Instead, use a different title for each page on your site - one that corresponds to what is actually on that page.

Why? Who looks at the title sitting up there in the blue bar at the top of the screen?

The search engines, that's who. Therefore it needs to do two things: Contain your keywords and be relevant to the copy on the page.

That seems to be a second mistake some SEO "experts" are making - using titles and meta tags that don't correspond with anything on the page. Google doesn't like that at all!

So even if the overall theme of your page is "real estate copywriting," if you don't use that phrase in your copy, Google is going to say "Nope." Be sure then - if you use the word "marketing" in your title and your tags, use it in the first paragraph of your copy.

While no one knows all the details about how Google decides who gets to come first, we do know several things that make a difference. Those I've mentioned above, and one more important one: links to your site.

This is a little tougher to accomplish, so some people fall prey to using "link farms." I just read an article that says "stay away from them!" Apparently Google has gotten wise to that trick and might even de-list your site if you use them.

So, you need to work to get links to your site - and they need to be from relevant sites. That means if you're selling gardening equipment, don't go looking for links from a motorcycle dealership.

Do you see the pattern here: It's Relevancy. As long as your keywords, meta tags, titles, and links are relevant they'll benefit you. And as long as you use your keywords and keyphrases in a sensible, conversational manner, you won't get penalized for stuffing.