Janet Peischel’s The Internet Marketer: Five search engine optimization tips for non-techies | Janet Peischel

These bots (robots) read your website according to set criteria. SEO incorporates the ways we plan, design and influence our websites so they more closely align with this bot criteria. The more closely our websites meet Google’s criteria, the more likely potential clients will find us.

Here are five simple steps to improve your SEO value:

1. Find out how your customers search for your product

The Google spiders will be crawling your website to find out what keywords you employ for your product.

There are no set rules for finding search terms or keyword phrases. Put on your customer hat and start looking for your product. What words are you keying into a search field to find your site? Use free keyword planner tools from Google or WordStream. I like a tool called Ubersuggest. There are many more and all do the same thing. Type in a word and the app will pull up associated keyword phrases. Identify those that have a significant number of searches associated with them, but are not just crazy competitive.

2. Create URLs that tell Google what you do

Don’t overlook the importance of each page’s URL. Googlebots expect to be able to read from your URLs what a webpage is about. Providing SEO-friendly URLs is a simple job, and it can affect your ranking. These are signposts.

If you have a URL that looks like this:

3. Create your website for mobiles rather than desktops

If your website isn’t designed to be mobile-friendly so it adapts to all devices, it’s time to invest in a new website. Google rewards mobile first at the expense of desktop-only website.

Good visuals are an important part of web design and a good way to boost your SEO.

Each page should have at least one high-quality, high-resolution image. If your images are too big, your website won’t load.

As you upload your images, you’ll be presented with fields for Description and Alt Tags. Fill these in.

You can further increase your SEO value by adding your company name and a description of the images. Alt tags tell the Googlebot what your images are. They read the code, because they can’t actually see the images.

5. Avoid content duplication

If you repeat the same copy across the pages on the website or replicate copy from another website, you potentially could be penalized by Google for duplicate content.

Avoid duplication—even calls to action!

A website is an important part of your marketing program and a responsibility. It requires regular reviews and fresh content. Google makes an estimated 500 algorithm changes/year, so we need to pay attention to search engine updates and algorithm shifts.

Do you have questions about SEO? Call me—let’s talk about optimizing your website.