SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and even though people keep saying it’s dead or dying and it’s all because of social media, but the absolute opposite is true. How do I know this? Easy, do a Google Search. More importantly do a Google Search for yourself.
I ran a google search for my name and my blog is #10 on the first page. Which is better than where I was a couple months ago (about 28th) so I’ve been working hard to get up there, but with several large factors against me it’s going to be tough cracking the top 5 (such as I’m competing with a popular male model and an artist who has the name domain).
Now, let’s do a search with my name and one of the keywords I want associated with my name: Josh Peters Social Media When looking at the results did you notice that all 10 results are me? Did you also notice that 5/10 of the results were my social media profiles? True my blog outranked my Twitter profile (take that Twitter!) but I’ve worked hard to get that result via SEO.
If I wasn’t trying and paying attention to what I was posting and the keywords I used then it I wouldn’t show up for those terms, so SEO hasn’t shrunk or died, it’s grown and is changing. As long as there are search engines around there is always going to be a need for SEO.
At the most basic level you want to make sure your content is readable and accessible to the users. If possible use your keyword(s) in the first sentence, through out the text and in the last sentence, and in the header if you can. Don’t use it unnecessarily because it will look like you are trying to load your content with keywords and Google can penalize you for that and it doesn’t fit in with making your content readable and accessible.
Your H1 header is really important. It should contain your Main Idea, be 3-6 words long and have your most important keyword(s) in it. Google also gives a little more weight to bolded and H2, H3, etc tags. That doesn’t mean you should write everything in bold or h4 because that would be abusing the intended purpose and most search engines are not a huge fan of that.
Articles should contain between 250 – 1,000 words. Google will only crawl about 1,000 words and then it will stop reading. If your posts are going longer than 1,000 words break them up into more pages. If it’s under 250 add more content, though to be on the safe side shoot for 300 words minimum to make sure Google will read your page.
When creating your file structure make sure your folder and file names incorporate use of your keywords. This also goes for image names, and really any content at all that is inserted or embedded in your site / blog.
When you link to your internal pages (which you should be doing) your anchor text is really important.Make it relate to the words it’s connecting to and never use click here. If you’re formulating your headlines properly then you would just use your headlines as the anchor text you link through.
Tags
They are extremely annoying when they are on your clothes, but for search engines Tags are extremely important. Your title tag – < Title >Stuff Goes Here< / Title > – should be about 6-12 words and contain your most Important keyword(s). The Meta Description Tag -< meta name = “description” content = “this is where you put a quick description of the page” > – is usually 1-2 sentences long and is the summary of your web page.
Meta Keywords are not as important as they used to be, but still carry some weight in most search engines. – < meta name = “keywords” content=”a list, of your, keywords, seperated by, commas” > the length on this tag varies and it contains all of your keywords for that page.
Search engines can’t see pictures so make sure your alt tags are properly used for putting keywords into your content. Make sure your keywords flow with your content and your keywords will flow with your pictures.
How does social media affect SEO?
In the example I used above we saw that 50% of the front page of Google were links to my social media profiles. This means that the same thing goes for your business / personal accounts. Make sure the content on the landing pages of your profiles is well written and strategically uses your keywords. Then make sure you link back to your website / blog if using keywords (if you can). Create a system and keep your keywords in mind when using any form of social media.
Next time we are going to delve a little into the keywords words themselves, so stay tuned and thanks for reading.
Josh “Shua” Peters
