SEO tip #1: Content is key

There is no quick fix when it comes to getting a site to the top of Google (other good search engines are available) but there are a few SEO best practices that can give your site the best possible chance of achieving a high ranking for your desired search terms.

Content and keywords

Gone are the days of cramming keywords into meta tags, search engines are very clever and look more at the content than the metadata when ranking a website.

Using keywords in your meta tags is still good practice but they must be used sparingly and also feature in the content of the page.

Give careful thought to what words and phrases your potential site visitors will use to find your site. Google AdWords keyword tool is a good online tool to test out what search terms have a higher search volume. For example, if you search ‘website design’ it shows that ‘web design’ gets more searches than ‘website design’, so web design would be the better phrase to use.

Once you have your keywords and phrases, use them regularly throughout your site, especially as navigational links, headings and in the page title where possible. But don’t go overboard, as search engines will penalise sites packed full with keywords so find a happy medium. Search engines also look at the content that surrounds your keywords to check that the keywords are relevant to the content so make sure what you’re saying makes sense and keywords aren’t just being dropped into content just for SEO.

Keep it fresh and original

To really attract people to your site and keep them there your site’s content must be unique and informative. This can then lead to people linking to your site and marketing via word of mouth. If someone likes your content they are likely to tell others about it.

Search engines also love fresh content so keeping your site up to date is very important. One way of doing this would be to have a news section or blog that is constantly updated with new products, projects and services. This will give visitors to your site reason to keep coming back to check on new content and give search engine spiders a reason to come back to crawl and index your site.

Understanding search engines

At the end off the day search engines want to give its users the best possible results that suit their search criteria otherwise it wouldn’t be doing its job properly. Using fresh and unique content in your website that is informative and incorporates your keywords is a great way of boosting rankings and attracting more traffic to your site.