Website Optimization Primer

"I SEO You"

Search Engine Optimization Makes It Easy for Clients to Find You
Since the answer to "Where did you find that?" is often "I Googled it," businesses and organizations work hard to be top-of-page. The goal: To optimize the chances that the searching "spiders" of Google, Yahoo, Bing, and smaller search engines find you. When Warren Camp develops sites, he helps clients understand the most-basic SEO elements when he suggests including the following six basic elements to improve SEO.

1. Fresh Content  Blogs — and their updated content — count as new content. Keeping all web pages fresh is essential. Facebook and Twitter updates help, too.

2. Backlinks  These are links to your site from elsewhere. SE spiders see backlinks relevant to your site as worthwhile. If you're a missionary, for example, church backlinks rank much higher than social network backlinks.

3. Keywords  The one element that has continued to drive Internet growth over the past decade is keywords; they're the phrases we type in when searching for products, services, and answers from search engines. Relevancy of keywords and key phrases to page content raises your rank.

4. Density  Keeping keyword and key phrase density low avoids SEO demotion, which should be avoided at all costs. Warren usually keeps density to 1.5 and 3 percent; Google considers density over 5.5 percent to be spam.

5. URL and Title Tag  A web page's address (URL) is important. However, SE spiders are more concerned with a page's title tag — the browser label for individual pages (see this page's browser title). Warren codes every page with a specific title tag using page-relevant keywords or phrases to make it easier for spiders to find.

6. H1 and <p> Tags  H1 is code for "header tag" and <p> is for "paragraph." Using each element appropriately is essential for high page ranks. It's not enough to boldface a word, as in desktop publishing; text must be properly coded. Search engines see these two tags as more important elements, paying attention to them more frequently.

There's a Lot More to Know about SEO

Warren Camp has the years of experience necessary to implement, track, analyze, and optimize websites. To learn more about how SEO works and how best to optimize your site's pages, take a look at these WCD pages.

You can or call him directly at 209-795-7661, if you'd like professional help verifying your site's current SEO listing or creating and optimizing a new listing. Let WCD begin today to help you improve your website's performance while significantly increasing its traffic.

If you'd like Warren Camp Design to create a new site, redesign or freshen up your existing site, or evaluate your site objectively, or call WCD at 209-795-7661.