The bare bones of SEO is actually one of our favorite topics in the SEO realm of Filament because it’s vital to website success and it stays relatively constant. The world of search engine optimization has shape shifter qualities and is continually evolving and morphing into something different, but the bones stay the same. If you optimize the following five areas of your website you’ll boost your organic search potential.
Keywords
The first step in this entire process is the “hardest”. It’s not that it’s necessarily difficult but it may take a little time and some research if you haven’t already done the work. Yes, it’s time to once again talk about keywords and key phrases. If it seems like we constantly harp on this, we do. It’s the backbone of all SEO bones. We really cannot stress strongly enough how important it is that you know what keywords and key phrases your target audience uses to search for your website offering. Then, go beyond that and find out what your future target audience uses as a search term that your website results would fulfill.
To explain this further let’s use an example. Say your company is called SkiX and you create adaptive skis for people with physical disabilities. Let’s further imagine that you are the top brand and well known in the industry so you know people use your name, SkiX, as a keyword. But there are also many people out there who haven’t heard of you who may be finding your company when they use a search query such as “adaptive skis” or “skis for people with handicaps” etc.
Establishing not only the keywords your website visitor base uses but the keywords your potential loyal followers and customers use is where the real SEO bones work begins. Once you have a handful of wonderfully descriptive, accurate and popular keywords/key phrases, you’re ready to roll!
Title Tags
Your title tag is your prime real estate in the digital world. This is where you get noticed and attract the most “digital foot traffic”. It also shouts out to the search bots and lets them know what your company is about. Every page of your website should be optimized to let the world know who you are, what you’re about and what is on that particular page. The challenge is to do that in 50-60 characters. You can create a title tag that is longer than that, but that’s all that is viewable from a search engine perspective.
Content
What you say to your audience is not only designed to inform, entertain and convert them into customers; it also needs to be thoughtfully keyword rich so it keeps the search bots on topic as well. Optimize your website content and watch your website traffic soar.
Headings
Headings call out to the audience and the bots, in one glance, what data will follow. Put thought into your headings and optimize them with your keywords. One huge heading that companies often neglect is the contact page heading. “Contact” has no SEO value to you whatsoever. But “Contact SkiX” is instantly transformed into a better SEO option.
Alt Attributes
Alt attributes are really just image tags. They’re captions that describe what the image is but they rest behind the image and are really only seen when you hold your cursor over the image or if you have a computer that reads this data. This is a vital tool for people with visual impairments. This is also important for the search engines as it lets them know you have images and video that enhances and relates to your content.
Not only is it important to have these website SEO bones in place, but you should review them regularly to make sure they’re still appropriate to your content, purpose and your audience.
Need help refocusing the SEO for your website? Contact Filament today.
