6 SEO Basics You Need To Get Right

I remember when I built my first website around 15 years ago (possibly longer because Google wasn’t even around) and I was excited to have the prospect of a business online 24/7 where everyone could find me.  I publish my website using FrontPage and I was in business, and the amount of visitors I had was unbelievable!

It was zero!, that’s right, it’s not a typo, I had nil, nothing, nada, zilch!

So what better vision to have than to index the internet and thanks to Google, we really now have a fighting chance of being found, and search engines enable us to compete with the big budget of a corporate, because if you get your onpage SEO Basics right, you will not have to spend a penny on online advertising, so it will come down to knowledge, skill and the right content and that makes us all equal.

So what are the 6 SEO basics you need to get right?

1. Research and target the correct Keywords
2. Your article heading must have your keywords in it
3. Make sure your URL has your keywords in it
4. Your written content needs to have your keywords in they need to be used the correct number of times
5. Your meta description has your keywords in it
6. Have at least one image with your keywords in the ALT tag

1. Research Keywords

Firstly you need to decide what keywords you are going to target.  So let me explain what Keywords are.  Keywords are pretty much core to getting your seo basics right.  It could be a word, a few words or little longer like a key phrase, there are some subtleties around phrases but for the purposes of this article I will keep things simple.

Here are two examples of Keywords which could be two words such as web hosting or you could target a key phrase such as best web hosting in New Zealand

The first thing I do is find a keyword or phrase that is not too competitive, but one which is being searched for enough times that it will create traffic/visitors to your site.  To learn about keyword research and free keyword tools you could use Google Keyword Planner or even use a free version of Web CEO they are both great tools to use and will help you learn SEO Basics and well as help  you research keywords.

2. Article heading

Your article heading needs to have your keywords in it, it’s pretty simple, so just take a look at the images below.  Try to use heading as if you were speaking to someone in a natural language.

3. Make sure your URL has your keywords.

If you use blogging software such as WordPress then this is pretty easy to do.  Take a look at the screenshot below so you can see what I mean about making sure your URL (the full website address which shows in your web browser address bar) has your keywords in it.

4. Write content with your keywords in mind.

You need to write at least 300 words for Google to recognise it as credible enough content.  If you can write over 1000 words, then Google see the article as being Authoritative and you will jump in the rankings.  I will keep the topic for building Authoritative sites for another time and we will stick to seo basics for now. You cannot just copy and paste articles from other sites because Google will know this as it also searches for plagiarism.

You cannot just stuff keywords into paragraphs because it will backfire on you because this is keyword stuffing and Google and other search engines will penalise you and your site.  Keyword stuffing is basically using your keywords too much and your content not making any sense.  There is such a thing the Flesch–Kincaid readability test which determines how easy your content is to read.

You get the message, your content needs to be well written and have the correct keyword density.  Some argue that keyword density should be at least 1% which is 1 keyword/phrase for every 100 words of copy, however, some think it should be higher than this and up to 3% to 6% but it should be at least 1% and I think the longer your article you should head to the higher percentage of keyword density.

5. Your metadata must to have your keywords

Your metadata is an important part of getting your SEO basics right.  Your metadata is a brief description of what your content is and it is a maximum of 156 characters.

It is what people see when they search results and the results are displayed in the summary of results.  Take a look at the screen shot provided from a Google search for best widgets.  How you create that metadata will depend on what platform/software you use to write your content, so you will need to investigate how your software does this.  By default, Google will look at the first 156 characters on your web page, but quite often you want to tweak your meta data to improve your search engine results.

6. Have an image with an ALT tag

In every article you should have an image with an alt tag.  What is an alt tag? Atl means alternate, so it is alternate text which you should add to the image so search engines know what the image is about.  Search engines are clever, but not clever enough yet to know what your image is about so the alt tag tells the search engines what your image is about.  I am using WordPress so in the image below, I can add an ALT tag into the image.  No one gets to see the tag, it just resides in the background code.  So don’t actually add the word ALT onto the images itself.

Notice in the image above that my alt tag is SEO Basics which is the keyword/phrase I am targeting by writing this article.

Understanding how your site is displayed in search results

Take a look at the screen shot below and pay careful attention to detail and the highlights I have created for you to see why the areas I have explained to you are part of getting your seo basics correct and how the results are displayed using a search engine such as Google.  Click the image to see a larger view.

I hope you find this useful and please show the love and share these seo basics.  Feel free to comment or feedback and ask any questions you like or ask on twitter @bigplanswebhost or our Facebook page bigplansweb.

Happy optimising and may the search engines be in your favour!