SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. Search engines such as Google and Bing use web crawlers, spider or bots to crawl the web. They follow links and check keywords and content to decide each web page’s ranking.
Your web page needs to come up on the first search page (preferably ranking number one) when a relevant keyword is searched. Determining appropriate keywords is very important when designing and writing content for your website.
Keywords
Good keywords include words like California (your location), diving and eco-tourism (your business type), helmet diving (your product type), and SeaTREK (your brand name)… think about what you would type in a search engine when looking for a business similar to yours. Make sure to include these keywords in your text — organically. Too many repetitions of a word can result in a lower ranking. The algorithms that Google and other search engines use are very smart… trying to ‘cheat’ will not serve you well.
It is also a good idea to use keywords in your titles and use the heading tags in the proper hierarchy — h1 tags are more important than h2 etc.
Images
Any images on your website should include alt tags. This is for accessibility purposes, and it helps the search engine to find your site using the content of your images. It is also helpful to name your images with a relevant description using dashes (-) in place of spaces. Do NOT use underscores (_).
Make it Mobile Friendly
Use css media queries to detect screen size, and design your site to work well on mobile devices. More and more people search the web using their mobile devices, if your content doesn’t look right or behave correctly — people will leave your site and you will lose potential business. You can also look into AMP and see if it is right for you.
Content
Not only is it important to have really well written, keyword-rich, entertaining body text — it is very important not to duplicate content. Search engines want originality and duplicate content will result in lower rankings. Do not copy anything word for word.
Creating content on the web that links back to your website is also extremely important. Fresh and engaging blog posts are a great way to keep your audience engaged and increase your page ranking. See our guide to setting up a blog for tips and tricks on getting started.
Meta data
Meta data is data that only the search engine utilizes — it does not show on your website. There is a keyword meta data tag, but its relevance in ranking has lost its luster. The more important meta data tags are title and description. Google uses these to preview your site on a search page.
There are also ways to indicate to Facebook and Twitter what image and description will show up if someone shares a link to your website.
Bonus
Ever wondered how some websites have star ratings and display more information in their search engine results? Try using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper
Do you have any tips or tricks about SEO that you’d like to share? Add them in the comments below.
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