The process of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has gained popularity in recent years as a means to reach target audiences through improved web site positioning in search engines. However, few have an understanding of the SEO methods employed in order to produce such results. Many who seem to claim theirselves as experts are giving SEO space a bad name and many have spoken about this issue in the past.
My goal is to educate the audience and my readers and that is what I intend to do in this post.
Identifying Target Search Terms
The first step to any SEO campaign is to identify the search terms (also referred to as key terms, or key words) for which you want your site pages to be found in search engines – these are the words that a prospective visitor might type into a search engine to find relevant web sites.
Do you want to reach visitors who are local, regional or national in scope?
For example: Joe’s plumbing, Joe’s plumbing in SF, Joe’s plumbing in San francisco, Joe’s plumbing in San francisco bay area, Plumbing services in san francisco bay area etc.
Your target terms should be at least two words in length and, of course, be relevant to the content of your site pages. Your own intuition and team brainstorming are good places to start with key term selection.
These are considerations that need careful attention as you begin the SEO process. After all, it’s no use having a good search engine ranking for terms no one’s looking for.
We Have the Terms, Now What Do We Do With Them?
Once you have selected the search terms you want to target, the next step is to integrate the terms into your site pages to make them relevant.
Selecting Pages for Optimization
Initially, each business owner has to make a list of pages that they wish to optimize. Some pages offer better focused content relating to the terms that you want to target better than others. Each page should focus on one or two of your target items.
Make Use of Head Tags
Search engines tend to weigh words placed within page head tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.) more heavily than they do general text. Whenever possible, include your target terms within the head tags, especially the h1 tag at the top of your page, to ensure that your pages get maximum search engine exposure. You can use a CSS stylesheet to format your head tags so they are consistent with your site design.
About Meta Tags
Once thought to be the gateway to top search engine rankings, meta tags are no longer weighed very heavily by search engines, if at all. This is primarily due to the abuse of meta tags by unethical marketers. However, this does not mean that you should ignore meta tags altogether, just be aware that they are only a small part of the SEO puzzle. The two tags you’ll want to pay attention to in optimizing your pages are the description meta tag and the keywords meta tag.
The Page Title Tag
The title tag in the HTML head of your site pages is a critical, yet often overlooked, location to insert your target terms. Search engines weigh the title of your pages quite heavily in determining relevance, so you’ll want to make sure that each page on your site that you want to show up in search engine results has a unique title incorporating the targeted term for that page.
Keyword Density: Do your own research to figure out how much is too much. You may want to have your keywords appear 2-3 times per every 200 words of text – this ratio is what we call keyword Density.
Linking Structure & Strategy: Let the Spiders Crawl: I will discuss more about this in my future posts.
Good night folks! 
