Business Marketing Magazine Summer 2017 Do It Yourself SEO Tips and Tools | Page 20

Step 4: Image Alt Tags H ave you ever gone to Google, typed a word to search, and in the search results at the top you see a bar of images that just ‘happen’ to fit your keyword perfectly?! Since Google is only a computer, how does it know what the picture looks like? Because you tell the computer what your images are about by putting your key phrases in the “alt” tag within the image tag. A picture is worth a thousand words. Step 5: Links that Hurt You Links can help you, but they may also hurt you. This is a finely tuned dance that needs to be choreographed and practiced. Good links are critical, but they are also one of the places that websites get penalized for duplicate content. It is so easy to put multiple links all over your website, but if they link to identical or appreciably similar pages & content…you’ll be penalized. This is called “duplicate content.” Keep your links simple and unique, and you will do great. External links to your website are also vital to your SEO, but don’t fall into the link farm penalty. Many “black hat” SEO companies will do this, which can get you banned from Google permanently. Step 6: Text & Density Text and text content are important because this is what your customers SEE. 20 www.businessmarketingmag.com It is important to Google as well. Google wants to deliver relevant content to its customers. When you design your website pages, keep your customers in mind and you will be rewarded. While you create content, keep one simple rule in mind: keep your content/html ratio leaning on the side of content. If you have less than 15% text compared to the html that is on the page, Google will see this as a “non-informative page” and they may give it a lower ranking. Once that happens you will be pushed down in the search results. (While doing this step, don’t forget the duplicate content penalty.) Step 7: Header Tags This article is not really the best place to talk about all the different header tags and their uses, so I’ll be brief, but don’t neglect this step. A header tag is the

, etc. tags that are in your text on your page. It is a great design tool to make some text larger or a different color from the rest. What the search engines see is your extra emphasis on that phrase, giving the

tag the most relevance. Now we’re getting somewhere. Step 8: XML Sitemap Your sitemap is a great place to organize the pages on your website in H