Common SEO Questions Answered!1. Keyword Essentials:
The most significant aspect of creating keywords for your website is that you must begin the process by doing adequate research. Be sure to take advantage of any types of free tools or services, which may be at your disposal. A good example of this would be the Google AdWords tool. You might also want to consider using a portion of your advertising budget to pay for some more comprehensive programs.

It’s important to note that keyword density is considered to be obsolete these days. It’s imperative that you do your best to include keywords naturally within the text of your website while ensuring that you’re not doing this to excess.

2. Create an Outstanding URL:
There are quite a few things that you must do in order to create an outstanding URL. From the start, you need to choose a domain name that is relatively short which also includes your most valuable keyword phrase. Hyphens are allowed and acceptable, but you should refrain from adding any more than two.

When it comes to individual page naming, be sure to include a highly relevant keyword. Do your very best not to use any session ID’s or other dynamic and database variable URL’s.

3. Utilize Longtail Keywords:
Longtail keywords offer the highest impact on search engine rankings. These typically consist of a minimum of three words. If you’re able to come up with some that are intrinsically related to your specific industry, it will knock the competition right out! In addition, any traffic that is driven to your site as a result will be much more relevant which means a better end result.

4. Utilize Latent Semantic Indexing:
Latent semantic indexing, commonly referred to as LSI, is the process in which you include related phrasing and keywords with your main phrases in an effort to elevate your site’s ranking within the various search engines. For example, if your site sells shoes, you would include other related words such as heels, pumps, sandals and boots. This would, in turn, help to elevate your rankings within the search engines. This would also ensure that your site doesn’t come across as any type of spam since you wouldn’t be using the same old keywords again and again.

5. Make Your Internal Links Count:
Most websites often forget to use their internal links properly and that puts them at a disadvantage from the very beginning. It’s an extremely simple way to ensure that each and every one of your pages score a better targeted ranking within all of the various search engines. Ensure that you include every page’s most targeted keyword or phrase within internal links, which are pointing to those pages. Additionally, make sure to always reference any of your other pages with links within your site’s content as appropriate.

6. Invest in PPC:
A PPC campaign is the absolute fastest way to see immediate results from your advertising dollars. Begin your campaign using all of the keyword research that you’ve done previously. Start small! PPC costs can skyrocket if you’re not familiar with how it works. Play around with different style ads. Use varying strategies and keywords until you see some definitive results. Only then should you begin running bigger campaigns.

7. Optimize any Images Used:
It’s crucial that you use an ALT tag for all of your images that describes in detail what the actual image consists of. Use targeted keywords and phrases for maximum impact. This will ensure that those who are not able to see images will still have an understanding of what is in that location. This also ensures that you can be found within image-based searches. In addition, do your best to name your images using a keyword within the actual file name.

8. Optimize the Title Tag:
Don’t fool yourself. You can’t just put anything in your title tag and expect it to be sufficient. If you think that, you can’t possibly be any further from the actual truth. The page title offers an outstanding opportunity to increase your ranking while also attracting people to your site.

Your title tag should be no more than 70 characters long. Keep it short, simple and to the point. Additionally, make sure that every single page has it’s own specific title. Do your best to include your targeted keywords into the title and try to be extremely descriptive.

9. META Tag Insight:
Be aware that the META keywords tag isn’t used by Google for ranking anymore, although some of the other engines might still be using it. Most important are the META description tags and title. Make sure to limit your title to 70 characters or less and ensure that your META description is 160 characters or less. If you go over that, the various search engines will simply cut it off. Always remember to utilize your targeted keywords in your META tags.

10. Do NOT do – Building Links:
For the most part, many people do all of the wrong things when it comes to building links for their site. Please, do NOT buy links or use a “link farm.” Those are two of the worst things you could possibly do. Do your best to avoid any low quality directories that could be construed as “spam.” Blog commenting, link exchanging and posting on various forums are not as valuable as they once used to be. Additionally, it looks extremely unnatural if you were to suddenly have thousands of links within the span of a few short days. Remember, it’s quality versus quantity.

11. What to Do – Building Links:
The best thing to do is to submit your links to respected directories such as Best of the Web and DMOZ. Try to focus on creating links to others within your own industry or niche. This will definitely improve your reputation within the community. Do your best to use unique content that can serve as bait for your website. These days, social networks can be highly beneficial.

12. Don’t dismiss Canonicalization:
It’s imperative that you ensure that your pages are not being counted more than one time. This will confuse all of the search engines and possibly impact your tracking statistics. Make sure to use 310 redirects to transport pages to one homepage and fix all issues with the rest of your pages as well.

13. HTML is Best:
Other program languages such as JavaScript aren’t searchable in search engines and so they are of no benefit to you. Make sure that you use only HTML so that you are automatically increasing your page rank. Don’t ever over complicate your site by using lots of frames, forms or code types that are unsearchable.

By Adrianne M Gonzalez © 2012