8 Tips for Basic Do-It-Yourself SEO

•1. Meta Title
Create your title using keywords and your farming area. Do NOT use ‘Home Page’, ‘Index Page’, or just your name in the title of your webpage. Use different titles on different pages to increase your exposure in the search engines for different search phrases. Keep this UNDER 70 characters in length.

•2. Meta Keywords
Use your key words in your web page title, in the description and throughout the content of the page. Do NOT use the same keywords for every single page on your site. Target each page to different keywords to maximize internet exposure. Keep your keywords UNDER 10 per page to better target your message.

•3. Meta Description
Use your description to tell humans and robots what your webpage is about. Search engines normally use your Meta description under the title of your site in search engine results. Like keywords and titles, your description should be different for each page on your website. Limit your description to 150 characters or less.

•4. Content
Your content should closely describe the title, keywords and description. Stay on topic and don’t overuse your keywords. Search engines now use what is called semantic indexing, so you do not have to repeat yourself over and over to get indexed properly for your intended topic.

•5. Anchor text linking
Whether you are linking to internal pages on your site or pages outside of your site, be sure to use anchor text to let search engines know what the linked page is about.

•6. Internal Linking
Make sure that you are opening internal links in the same browser using anchor text. Opening a new window for every page on your website just annoys viewers and detracts from a professional image on your website. Also, limit your use of images as links and try to use anchor text navigation as much as possible on your site.

•7. Website Organization
Organize your website into specific topics and dedicate one page per topic. Don’t try to explain several topics on one page. Your home page should describe a little about you and your business and act as a ‘link portal’ to information on other pages of your site. Do not overwhelm viewers with EVERYTHING about you, your business and your website on the home page.

•8. Website Navigation
Website navigation should be simple and easy on the eyes. If you have a lot of pages on your website then group them into categories and provide one heading for every 4-5 page links in your left navigation. This helps viewers quickly understand the content available on your site. If you list too many links in one list, viewer’s eyes will strain, people will feel overwhelmed and you will lose visitors.