I’m sure you’re interested in improving your Website, but maybe you don’t know where to start. Perhaps you’ve heard of “SEO” or Search Engine Optimization in stories about search engine marketing. The best part is, you don’t even need to be a seasoned Web developer to implement an effective SEO strategy for your Web site all free.

Before I jump into the five powerful tips that you don’t want to forget, I want to make it clear that I support SEO professionals; I want you to understand the mechanics around optimizing your landing pages for search result pages before you sink a major investment into an SEO firm. There are many trusted professionals out there with a wealth of expertise and will be able to guide you to effectively grow your Web audience through search engine optimization. In this challenging economy, it would be foolish to neglect to optimize your Web site on your own.

Search engine optimization or “SEO” as the acronym goes, is the process of improving the quality of a page’s relevance to a Web visitor in addition to the ranking (visibility) in a search engine. When one employs a search engine marketing strategy, the goal shouldn’t be to increase traffic, but to attract higher-converting traffic. I’m a believer that quality content is superior to HTML semantics when it comes to SEO.

That said, I have five SEO tips that you don’t want to forget and list them below. Feel free to share this with whomever you think will benefit from this list.

5 SEO Tips That You Don’t Want to Forget!

1. Don’t Bury Engaging Content

Or as a former colleague told me, “don’t put the milk in the back of the fridge.” Make your content plainly visible at all times and don’t hide or bury the most enriching content. One way to do that is to make sure your most important content is accessible above the fold of your Web browser. Place visual focus on items that should be the most important to your readers by bolding or emphasizing them appropriately.

Bullet-point types of content should be placed in lists so search engines can see that it’s a list and helps direct the search engine in prioritizing the content on a page. Preceding lists, headlines should describe the list.

By not burying the content from reader’s eyes, you make it more visible to search engines; which results in more traffic that is qualified to your page.

2. Link Openly, Especially to Neutral Destinations

Back in the old days of the Web, and even some folks today, they feel totally opposed to proving links to other pages on the Web that aren’t their own. What is a link? Is it an endorsement? Is it a fire exit? Well, it’s not… it’s empowerment for your visitors to learn more about the subjects that you write about. I recommend linking to destinations on the Web that support your topics. As such, search engines interpret you as a source of relevant information when you sprinkle a few links within your articles contextually.

Example: Infusionsoft provides an all-in-one solution for small business owners through their marketing automation software.

3. Remember to Describe Your Content

We all got a name, our cars have license plates and we have phone numbers. Why? Besides giving big brother the power to track us, we want others to know who each of us are. Websites are no different. They need to be given a name (title) and be told what they are (meta keywords and description). To do this, all you need to do is include descriptive title and meta tags about your content. I’ve seen way too many pages lacking these elements, which are very critical to the success of them in search engines.

An example of this might be a landing page talking about “loan modifications.” Well, that topic is going to be very crowded lately, especially since the president laid out a new plan to enable homeowners to modify their home loans under new provisions. To differentiate and to more accurately describe your landing page, you might want to consider using the following code:

<title>Loan Modification Specialist in Phoenix, AZ</title>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”loan modification specialist, arizona loan modification, az loan modification, phoenix az loan, home loan interest rate az”>
<meta name=”description” content=”Jon Doe, a local expert on loan modifications for Phoenix, AZ. Sign up to learn how to modify your loan quickly and easily.”>

In the example above, I titled a page with a targeted reference (Phoenix, AZ) and described the actual product/service available (a specialist). I’ve also listed out several examples of long-tail keywords that people would realistically enter into Google. Observe that I didn’t pad the keywords with “loan modification” because it’s extremely unlike that someone is going to convert with that in mind.

4. Update Content Frequently

What if you had a plain bagel with cream cheese every morning for a year? It’d probably get boring, or maybe you would be boring. The same goes for your Website — the same destination that looks like it’s a step back into 1994, just won’t work. Consider introducing a new Website with new types of content for your visitors to interact with, such as Google Maps, Facebook or Twitter integration.

For instance, on our site, we actually have a ton of articles for people to check out, even though it’s not the 100% focus of the site; it’s like maybe 3%.  These add additional value for your readers (and search engines) to consume and digest.

So maybe static articles might not float your boat… I gotcha. Optionally, I recommend using a blog to post updates as it pertains to your small business. A blog is relatively easy to setup and can provide people with valuable content. Search engines love blogs too because they are frequently updated — a sign that they are useful and probably interesting for searchers. I’ve also seen plenty of results where blogs supersede competitors on specific search terms when you write about them a lot.It’s easy to get started, I fully endorse the use of WordPress for your blog software.

5. Stay Away from Link Farms, Paid Backlinks or Blackhat SEO

While some may disagree with me, I stand firm on my recommendation to others out there to steer clear from link farms, paid text links or blackhat SEO techniques. These methods are not only distasteful, lame and annoying; they can and will get you banned from popular search engines. A short term benefit will provide a long-term impact — it’s not worth it.

“Link Farms” are pages with hundreds of links on them and really offer no benefit except to spread PageRank penalties. “Paid Backlinks” (unlike legitimate search engine marketing) are intended for Website owners to purchase hyperlinks from other sites in an effort to manipulate the PageRank algorithm. “Blackhat SEO” describes the family of methods intended to exploit the vulnerabilities within search engine. Top search engines discover all the blackhat SEO “secrets” and the guilty Websites are de-listed or at least penalized.  The lessons here — put your energy into quality SEO techniques and leave the dirty work for others and you’ll be ahead of the game this way.

A better alternative to purchasing links or deploying questionable techniques is to provide quality content. Invest your energy in building relationships with industry leaders who might want to include your link. Quality link building is one that involves genuine interest — so spark it up by attending conferences, commenting on blogs or causing some healthy amounts of controversy.

These are just the major tips as it pertains to SEO. The bottom line about optimizing for search engines is to increase conversions, not necessarily traffic. Often, you will see results in both traffic and conversions. (When I say conversions, I mean that variably like sales, opt-ins, attention, engaged users, etc.)

Search Engine Optimization is an important, but not the only method to optimize you sites for conversion. Later this month, I’ll talk about other aspects of Web site optimization. In the meantime, what do you think about this? I’m interested to hear your thoughts! If you have questions, myths and tips on SEO, share them in the comments below.

[Image credit: Danard Vincente on Flickr]

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