Search Engine Optimiation (SEO) Basics:
Getting Noticed on the Web

Okay, so we all know that the 800lb Gorilla for internet search is Google which serves up about 65% of all search results. But, don’t forget about Bing and Yahoo!  Between the 2 they provide nearly another 30% of search results. The rest is sprinkled around. Today, we’d like to discuss a few basics of your website’s Search Engine Optimization and ways to improve a website’s visibility on search engines by using page titles, descriptions, content and business listings to get higher on search results.

Important Aspects of SEO - Easy to do!

The Page Title is the first thing a search engine sees when “indexing” your website pages. The page title is the text at the very top of the browser. For instance, in Internet Explorer it is the text just to the right of the "e" in the blue bar. In Firefox the bar at the top is grey. It is important that these “Title tags” are descriptive words and phrases that searchers use to find you. Page titles tell both searchers and search engines what the topic of the page is. The page title is listed at the top of the search results. Each page of your website may have different page titles and the number of characters available to use is limited.

The Description Tag is a text description of your website page that is not visible on the page but is typically displayed by search engines in the search results. It reflects what the page and your company are all about and can be quite useful in generating that “click” when your site comes up in results. Your description tag may contain keywords and phrases, capitalizations and bolded characters, and should be limited to around 200-250 characters. Different description tags are beneficial for each page to better your search results.

Refreshing your content is a very important aspect of SEO. Not only does it keep your web visitors up to date, but also encourages all major search engines to “Re-Index” your pages. That re-indexing tends to move web pages up the organic listing “food chain”, improving search position. Google normally passes by your website about every 4 weeks so updating text regularly can make a significant difference in the way your content is perceived and treated, impacting your site’s search engine rank. 

With over 2 billion searches a day, Google is the number one search engine on the internet. By listing your business on Google, information about your business is already contained in the search engine, ready to be displayed! Best of all, a Google Business Listing is FREE! A Google business listing will help your company come up during local search results on Google Search and Google Maps! It also lets your customers know more about your business by supplying logos, location photos, hours of operation and more!

There are plenty of other contributing factors to high quality Search Engine Optimization including Alt tags, Back links, Reciprocal links, Landing pages and more. But starting with the basics can be easily and in most cases inexpensively achieved, and may have considerable effect on your overall website search success.