What matters in SEO ?

When a search engine robot hits a site to spider it (read the content), certain things are looked at when ranking a site. Well I take that back, Google has over 100 in its ranking criteria, but lets look at the basics:

When a robot hits the page the first thing it reads is the:

Meta data

This is not as important as it used to be but the title and the description will help you in the SERP’s (search engine results pages). The title and the description need to have the main keyword phrase for the page as close to the beginning of the title and the description as possible. Prominence is the key, as in life if something is important we say it straight away this is how the search engines think too.

Headings

H1

Each page should have a H1 tag and one only. This should contain the main keyword phrase that you want the page to be found for. The H1 should be no more than about 10 words. Place the H1 tag directly after the < body > tag as then Google and the other search engines understand what the page is going to discuss. Remember: prominence is the key.

H2-H6

Each section of the page should also have headers; I would use H2’s for the main header that describes the content below it. I would add a keyword that relates to the paragraph(s) below. When starting a new topic; add a new H2-H6. Again prominence is the key when positioning the keyword phrase regarding the related content below it.

Body Content

Again; ‘Prominence is the key’ - add the keyword phrase as close to the beginning of the paragraph as possible. Each page should be written with semantics in mind. Don’t know what semantics are; click here to find out more. Each page should contain a minimum of 250 words and be interesting and be fresh (fresh I hear you say) well don’t be pinching text from another site or a competitor as this will harm the trust ranking for your site, also your potential client and the search engines love new content. Be different and exiting, people get bored reading too much so get to the point and be specific.

This is the first of several parts to this article. I will publish more ASAP.