Search Engine Optimization is like the modern day equivalent of the search for the holy grail. Everybody on the net seems to be obsessed with it. Honestly, it is one of my heart’s desires to get on the top of google for some popular search phrase but until now I can’t manage to do that. I am writing this post simply because I want to write it – after all, this is a blog isn’t it? I maintain only two websites – this blog and www.sydel.net which is my business website. While other people manage to maintain 10 websites and keep them all at least on the first page for some particular keyword, I have mostly failed. In fact, the only useful search phrase that I really targetted which I can consider is a success is “lifetime web hosting” of which I am still #1 in google until the time of this writing. Now, with all these struggle, I found out that I’ve learned a lot of things – mainly from experiments and mostly from my friend who is also into Search Engine Optimization. So here are the things that I’ve learned so far:
- Decide for a keyphrase to target. A three-word keyphrase is often best and easy
- Include your keyphrase in your page’s title tag
- Include your keyphrase in your page’s meta keywords and meta description
- Include your keyphrase in your page’s body
- Include your keyphrase in your images’ alt attributes and in your links’ title attribute
- Make your keyphrase more prominent by putting them in the beginning or near the beginning of paragraphs. It is also helpful if you can put in the header tags especially h1 tags
- Lastly, don’t overdo your keyphrase. Otherwise you might be tagged for keyword spamming. The trick is to keep it as natural as possible – including your search keyphrase wherever possible but not everywhere
If you ask the experts, they will say that Search Engine Optimization is a form of art. Others will say it is a battle. And yet others will still say, it’s pure luck.
So what really is the secret to optimizing your website for the search engines? For me I think there’s no such thing as a secret for this. Rather, keep it simple and natural and you’ll find yourself on Google’s #1 page sooner or later.
