A lot of people sell expensive services to get a website a top ranking. And for the business with a lot of cash to burn, it might be worth it.
But for those of more modest means, search engine optimization (SEO) can be done fairly simply. Here are some tips:
Pick at least one search term that you want people to be able to find your site by. For me, it’s my name. For a friend, it was the name of a lake that he is trying to save from pollution. It’s a good idea to check the search volumes for the term (more about this in a later post).
You then want to use this term NATURALLY on your site. Don’t force it. After all, you still want people to read your texts, not get frustrated by your weird habit to use your search term several times in a sentence: “Travis Larson was really happy that he was given the name Travis Larson by his parents, also Larsons who liked the name Travis and thus bestowed it on their son, the aforementioned Travis Larson.” Google looks at a lot more than the number of times a search word appears, so you don’t need to go crazy. But make sure your site is RELEVANT to the search term you use.
2) A good place for your search term is your site’s meta description (that’s the short text you see when Googling something). It is an important sign post for people to know if this is the right page to click. My site uses my name and a brief description of what I do and where I am based. The idea is to help users know which Travis Larson I am (the one from America who lives in Finland). If you do not have a meta description, Google will pull text from the site that seems relevant. However, this text will almost certainly end with ellipses (...), and Google results where the description end in ... get lower click through rates! So this is another good reason to write a short, useful meta description.
NOTE: Google does not appear to use the meta tag for ranking your site - this is really just for the convenience of readers.
3) DO NOT stuff the “alt” tags (description of pictures in the HTML code) with your search words. Google pays about as much attention to Alt tags as Meta keywords (another waste of time - the description is enough). The Alt tags should only be used to help the visually impaired navigate your site. You often see people resort to strange language in order to stuff the Alt tags with their name (i.e. “The phone number of Travis Larson” - yes, I am talking to the guy in Florida). This is not only an obvious attempt at SEO, it is useless.
The end result of simple SEO tips? www.travislarson.net is number 2 on the search results with a small hobby site, only behind the Travis Larson Band. Which, by the way, is awesome.
The other lesson learned? Always double check your language. I just noticed a typo in the meta description. Time to go fix that....
