1. What is SEO, Exactly?
The goal of
foundational SEO isn't to cheat or "game" the search engines. The
purpose of SEO is to:
·
Create a
great, seamless user experience.
·
Communicate
to the search engines your intentions so they can recommend your website for
relevant searches.
2. What Search Engines Are Looking For
Search
engines want to do their jobs as best as possible by referring users to
websites and content that is the most relevant to what the user is looking for.
So how is relevancy determined?
·
Content: Is determined by the theme that is being
given, the text on the page, and the titles and descriptions that are given.
·
Performance: How fast is your site and does it work
properly?
·
Authority: Does your site have good enough content to
link to or do other authoritative
sites use your website as a
reference or cite the information that's available?
·
User Experience: How does the site look? Is it easy to
navigate around? Does it look safe? Does it have a high bounce rate?
3. What Search Engines Are NOT Looking For
Search engine
spiders only have a certain amount of data storage, so if you're performing
shady tactics or trying to trick them, chances are you're going to hurt
yourself in the long run. Items the search engines don't want are:
·
Keyword
Stuffing: Overuse of keywords on your pages.
·
Purchased
Links: Buying links will get you nowhere when it
comes to SEO, so be warned.
·
Poor User Experience: Make it easy for the user to get around. Too many ads and making
it too difficult for people to find content they're looking for will only
increase your bounce rate. If you know your bounce rate it will help determine
other information about your site. For example, if it's 80 percent or higher
and you have content on your website, chances are something is wrong.
4. Know Your Business Model
While this is
pretty obvious, so many people tend to not sit down and just focus on what
their main goals are. Some questions you need to ask yourself are:
·
What defines
a conversion for you?
·
Are you
selling eyeballs (impressions) or what people click on?
·
What are your
goals?
·
Do you know
your assets and liabilities?
5. Be Consistent With Domain Names
Domain naming
is so important to your overall foundation, so as a best practice you're better
off using sub-directory root domains (example.com/awesome) versus sub-domains
(awesome.example.com). Some other best practices with domain names are:
·
Consistent
Domains: If you type in www.example.com, but then your
type in just example.com and the "www" does not redirect to
www.example.com, that means the search engines are seeing two different sites.
This isn't effective for your overall SEO efforts as it will dilute your
inbound links, as external sites will be linking to www.example.com and
example.com.
·
Keep it Old: Old domains are better than new ones, but if
you're buying an old domain, make sure that the previous owner didn't do
anything shady to cause the domain to get penalized.
·
Keywords in
URL: Having keywords you're trying to rank for in
your domain will only help your overall efforts.
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