5 Tips for Natural SEO

Keyword Research

A good first step is to do some homework. Compile any findings from keyword research you have completed to produce a list of the most relevant, effective keywords and phrases for your site’s focus. If you are unsure which keywords and phrases are effective, (which you probably are unless you’ve used a service to help you determine effective keywords), use Overture’s free tool to help you research relevant keywords.

Sometimes your ISP’s logs will also reveal search terms users have employed to find your site through the various search engines. As a start to your research, it may help to find sites similar to yours and look at their source code to find what keywords/phrases are effective for them. If you remain unsure of any good phrases, as a last resort make your best guess about which keywords and phrases best describe the search terms you would want people to use to find your site.

Divide Web site Sections

Your research into keywords may lead to the discovery that while some keywords are relevant to one section of your site, they are off the mark or even completely different in another section. Before you decide on your final keywords, divide your website into natural logical sections. These sections can be groups of pages or single pages – search engines love single pages devoted to ONE topic and keyword phrase. Each section or page should have different meta tag and title sets that relate specifically to that section. For example, a Home Builder’s site might be divided into residential and commercial sections. Meta tag sets will be written for each section relevant to the product offerings, i.e. why use keywords like “new home builder” on pages that deal with commercial property rentals?

Re-word body text in sections/pages of your site to more closely align it with the keywords you’ll be using. For example, if you’ve found “new home builder” to be an effective keyword phrase, and the text on one of your site’s pages refers to you as “America’s leader in new home construction,” consider changing that phrase to “America’s #1 New Home Builder”. You’ll be setting the stage for a strong site/keyword relationship if you do.

Once you’ve determined the strongest group of keyword/phrases, pare the number down to a group of 5-10 words in up to 3 phrases. Some engines won’t read more than 10 words in a keyword meta tag, so always put the best first. Less is more. You can repeat words, but most engines penalize you for repeating a word in the same tag. For example, “new homes, new homes builder” would probably be 2 safe phrases to use together but “new homes, new homes builder, new homes, new homes builder, new homes, new homes builder” may cause your ranking to be lowered.

The point is not to stuff as many words as possible into the tag, but to use relevant words, and to repeat those words throughout the page content as well as the tags.

Title Tag

Many engines consider the TITLE tag of highest value when ranking your site, though many sites don’t use it to its potential because it can make for bad site aesthetics. Most sites opt for a simple title. It’s nice and clean, looks professional, and many browsers only show a few words anyway no matter how long the title actually is.

The title is the most valuable tag to tie in with your keywords/phrases. “Brook Group Construction” gets you almost no where, while “Construction, New Home Builder, Apartment Rentals” gets results. It may not look very good, but it will do wonders for your site’s placement, assuming of course that your content matches your page titles.

Comb your meta tag list for good combinations of words. Keep your title to no more than 10 words: 5-7 is better. Don’t waste words by using articles (and, in, the). You are limited to 124 characters but 80 is currently a good ceiling.

META name="KEYWORD"

This is where you put your keywords. Use single keywords or keyword phrases. Phrases are often 2 or 3 words, but if you have a good phrase that’s more than 3 words there’s no reason not to use it. Up to ten is good, 15 if you have to, but no more than 25. The strongest keyword/phrase should be listed first.

META name="DESCRIPTION"

Here’s where you can have a little fun. Just a little. Describe your web site using no more than 255 characters – 180 or less is best. You must incorporate all the keywords/phrases for this section into a nice, descriptive, proper sentence (or two). Be mindful of keeping your keyword/phrase relationships intact (words used in text should be used in title, Meta tags, ALT tags, etc.) Keep in mind that the engines will read this tag differently, in some cases truncate the message, so put the good stuff up front.

Be sure not to merely copy the “keyword meta tag” text into this description tag. Some engines penalize you for this. In addition, your Web site will be described by search engines as a list of keywords, commas and all and this doesn’t make sense to a potential visitor.

It is best to keep this description as short and to the point as possible. Some engines do not use your exact page description in their listings. If it is too long, you’ll have a better chance of controlling your listing description if your page description is short.