Most people are not aware of the scope of the work that is involved in search engine optimization. Of course, there are novice SEO’s that will just stuff a website with keywords and write pages and pages of irrelevant content in a pathetic attempt to achieve rankings. However, any seasoned professional knows that having a unique, well planned out strategy for SEO is a lot of work and very time consuming.

 

The 2 Categories of SEO

 

1.       On-Site Optimization

 

On-site optimization is anything that is done on your actual website to make it search engine friendly.  Some of these tactics are as follows:

 

·         Meta Data Optimization

·         URL Optimization

·         Content Optimization

·         Site Architecture Optimization

 

2.       Off-Site Optimization

 

As the name implies, this part of SEO includes anything that is done on other websites to establish your website as an authority site. Some of these strategies include the following:

 

·         Article Syndication

·         Guest Blogging

·         Video Optimization

·         Social Media Marketing

 

 

I’m not going to go into great detail here; however, what I am going to do is address the top 3 aspects on-site optimization.  Although all aspects of SEO are equally important in the big picture, every SEO campaign begins with the basics of on-site optimization.

 

 

 

1.       Met Data Optimization

 

Meta data optimization is vital to the success of any SEO campaign. Obviously, before you can optimize your meta data, you need to go through the process of keyword selection. Your keyword selection should be based on 2 metrics:

 

a)       Highest search volume

b)       Lowest competition

 

Once you have selected your keywords and assigned them to the appropriate pages on your site, its time to optimize your meta data. This does NOT mean that you just stuff the keywords in your meta tags as many times as you can, like some novice SEO’s do. There is a method to the madness and adhering to the method always delivers the most success.

 

2.       Content Optimization

 

As the saying goes, “content is king” in the world of online marketing. What else is there on the web? Everything is content on the web and the higher the quality of your on-site content, the better your site is going to rank in the search engines.

 

Much like meta data, optimizing your content is not about just throwing the keyword in there as many times as you can. Its always best to have an SEO veteran optimize your content for you. This insures that you are not doing anything that will harm your progress in the SERPs.

 

 

3.       Site Architecture

 

 

Having a website designed (or redesigned) in a way that makes for an easy crawling experience is vital. The architecture of your website can make or break the user experience and the way that the search engines crawl your site. If your site is difficult for the search engine’s spiders to crawl, you can bet that your site is not going to rank very well.

 

I’ve ranked the above listed on-site strategies as the top 3 most important; however, it is even more important to remember that this is only a small fraction of the pie. Successful search engine optimization requires the implementation of many tedious strategies, congruently. It is a lot of fun to see the results of SEO, but the time investment involved makes the acquisition of an outside agency worth your dollar.

 

That’s all for today!