When it comes to SEO, a person who can successfully gain the attention of the search engines is seen as a kind of Super Geek. Words like ‘backlinks,’ ‘keywords’, ‘alt text’, ‘meta data’ and more have confused and frustrated even the savviest business owner. Fortunately, basic SEO isn’t as hard as it seems. Here are some easy SEO tips that any business can do.

Keywords

Untitled

Image via Flickr by oh.tinkerer

It all starts with keywords. Though they sound intimating, all they are are the words your customers use to find you. When you are researching keywords, or naming your site, it’s not the time to get creative. For example, if you own a hair salon, referring to it online as a ‘hair design studio’ will lower your ranking.

Once you have determined what your customers actually call your type of business, simply weave the words into the copy. Use the words naturally, as you would in conversation. A common mistake of people new to SEO is to overuse keywords. Keyword stuffing, as it is called, will actually lower your ranking.

Make Sure Your Website Is SEO Friendly

There are certain things search engines love when it comes to websites. Not surprisingly they are often the same things that your human visitors love too. Search engines love sites that feature fresh, informative content, pages that load quickly, and internal linking to other pages on the site, the use of keywords and word descriptions of pictures. Google also loves to see sites that have been optimized for mobile platforms. Since Google owns Android, they want to feature sites that look good on Android devices as well as PCs.

Digital Content is King

Untitled1

Image via Flickr by aliwest44

The saying ‘content is king’ is even more true now. Once, you could get by with low quality articles, but not anymore. Today, search engines want fresh, original, ever changing content.

There are two ways to acquire this content. The first way is to start a blog and keep writing and posting articles to it.

The second way actually involves your company newsletter. If your company makes use of email marketing, then it probably already has a newsletter. This newsletter is made up of fresh, original, well-written content. Most often, newsletters are also beautifully formatted with pictures. Instead of just copying and pasting this content to your blog, consider making use of your auto-responder’s ‘archive’ feature. Innovative auto-responders, such as iContact, have an archive feature that enables you to post your entire newsletter to social media sites or your own blog.

Optimizing Pictures

When designing your site to attract the attention of search engines, it’s easy to overlook optimizing the pictures. However, the vast majority of search engines can’t see pictures. That makes describing the picture in words very important. This is known as ‘alt’ (alternative) text.

SEO is not as hard as it sounds. Once you know the basics of SEO, it’s not hard to learn the advanced tricks too. However, depending on your business, your location and the term you are trying to rank for, simple SEO tricks might be all you need to rank high.