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.
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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