Business Marketing Magazine Summer 2017 Do It Yourself SEO Tips and Tools | Page 19

All you have to do is open your email - notice how often you are spammed by heaps of companies that want to scare you into thinking ‘your website is doomed’; or saying that ‘you will never see the top of Google without their expert help’. If you sort through the threats and promises of gold, you can actually see that SEO isn’t really that scary. And even though you probably can’t master all of the SEO tricks on your own, if you understand some basic terms and rules, SEO is not the scary beast the spammers want you to think it is. Here is your 2016 SEO Guide in 10 easy steps: the theme for everything else you do. You should find ten different keywords. You will actually make these more specific as you go along, but if you have ten different words you can at least let Google know what your site is all about. That’s a great start! Step 2: Your Powerful Title Tag G oogle is just like you and I, it reads websites from top to bottom and one of the first tags it reads is the title tag. Each page should have its very own title tag, using one of the keywords in a short description that explains the page. Google has a new rule that will penalize you for duplicate content, which also applies to your title tag and any other Step 1: Know Your Keywords tags that you put on your pages. Make ne of the biggest mistakes people sure your tags/descriptions are unique, make is not researching and know- and make sure you are using the keying the power of their keywords. Google word or phrase that best fits each page. has given you a simple tool that you probably didn’t even know was readily Step 3: Description & Keyword available to you. Your Google Adwords Meta Tags tool has a link to a keyword planner. ou will find these two meta tags in Basically, you want to find the keywords the top of your code. (This informafor your business that have high traffic tion is not visible to the users. If someand low competition. Once you look up one else designed and developed your a word you will notice suggestions of website, this is a tag they will probably other words or phrases that are related. need to change for you.) Note: this is Make sure you read through them beone of the most important tags you will cause you may find some you would not send to Google for indexing. There are, have thought of otherwise. of course, more advanced SEO techniques, but this is a huge DIY step in the This is Step 1 for a very specific reason. right direction. The words you select are going to set O Y