Website SEO for Beginners

Search engine optimization is the buzzword of the century, especially for small business owners with websites they'd like to promote. But despite its great importance, SEO remains a mystery for many of the people it could help the most.

First, it's important to understand that search engine optimization comes in two parts: onpage and offpage SEO. An onpage SEO plan improves the content of a website to promote that same website. Alternatively, offpage search engine optimization builds a website's credibility by creating external links in blog posts, social profiles, and other locations.

Effective search engine optimization calls for a blend of both approaches, but it would be impossible to cover the intricacies of both in a single article! For now, let's narrow our focus to onpage website SEO.

Onpage search engine optimization targets a variety of factors, which we can classify into two categories: meta information and visible content.

Meta Information

A page's meta information belongs in the "head" section of the document's HTML. Webmasters can add meta tags to define a page's author, date of creation, keywords, description, and many other factors. Authors can define as many meta tags as they want, so there's no finite list of the labels you can choose.

For website SEO, it's important to add a meta description and keywords. Many search engines — Google included — list meta descriptions verbatim on their results pages, so it's extremely important to create a description that is compelling to humans, all the while containing relevant keywords for search engines. Limit your description to 200 characters or fewer; otherwise, search engines might cut you off mid-sentence!

Meta keywords have been deemphasized by search engines over the years, as some webmasters tended to abuse them. They still carry some weight, though, so it's worth adding your site's keywords (comma separated) to this tag.

Visible Content

This is the content that people can see when they visit your site, including the page title, header titles, and page copy. Search engines give added weight to page titles and headers (especially H1 and H2 tags), so it's important to include keywords in these sections and always use header tags to define new sections on your site.

Visible page copy is also important. This is another chance to beef up your website SEO with keywords, all the while informing human visitors about your products and offerings.

You might think the only search engine optimization you have to worry about is on your home page, but it's worth investing in website SEO for other pages as well.

For example, if you own an electronics store and have a specific page for all of your cameras, you should optimize your meta information, titles, and headers on this page as well, in addition to writing up 100 to 300 words of page copy about your camera selection to entice customers.

With these tips, you should be well on your way to promoting your website with search engine optimization. Good luck!

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