Search engine optimisation (SEO), is an extremely critical component of any internet marketing strategy. Optimise your content for search engines and get found by people who could help you earn a living.
SEO isn’t something you’ll learn overnight. And, it’s not something that is an exact science. But here are three of the best SEO practices you should pay close attention to.
1. On Page SEO
On page SEO is a practice that’s essential for any online entrepreneur. By optimizing every page of your site, you increase the chances of it being found by the right audience.
It’s important to note that search engines don’t index websites alone. They index web pages. Every page of your site has potential to be a gateway to a visitor who may become a client, so learn as much as you can about on page SEO elements.
Areas that you’ll want to pay attention to include: meta descriptions, permalink structure, site navigation, intrasite linking, authority linking, keyword usage, image tags, and h1, h2, and h3 tags. Learn how to optimize these elements and you’ll be well on your way to implementing some of the best SEO practices around.
2. Off Page SEO
While search engines pay attention to what’s on each page, they also look at off page SEO factors. Things that happen outside of your webpages but point to your webpages can impact your visibility online. Links drive traffic to your site and result in search engines taking notice.
Use social media and bookmarking sites, article directories, blog comments, guest posts, press releases, and other methods to point links to your web pages. And, not any links will do. Volume is good, yes… but the more tightly connected the subjects, the better.
3. Social Media
Social media sites should not be underestimated in terms of search engine optimisation tactics. Use bookmarking sites, news sites, microblogging, and forums to help you gain exposure in search engines. And, because of the social nature of these sites, you’ll drive people directly there as well as reap the benefits of viral marketing.
Best SEO Practices
If you try to find the best SEO practices and strategies, you’ll hear a dozen or two different suggestions. Focus on quality on your site, follow solid on and off page SEO strategies, utilise social media, and analyse your results to see what’s working.
Through quality, assessments and striving to continuously improve your SEO, you can not only dominate the search engines but you could also dominate your niche in terms of internet marketing success.
About Sean Rasmussen
Thanks Sean,
I find using the best SEO practices to be a lot of fun when you get it right & get a page 1 ranking. There is so much to learn about search engine optimization & it changes regularly so you can never really stop upgrading your SEO education. I look forward to reading more of your helpful tips!
Hi Sean,
You’ve highlighted some solid points here on the best SEO practices.
It can take a while to learn, understand put these points into action, but its a process that can significantly boost your traffic and is very worthwhile.
I recommend making a checklist to ensure you cover all of these points, and develop good SEO habits and processes.
Here’s a Search Engine Optimisation Checklist for blogs that I prepared earlier
Thanks for that list Sean
As with Cade I agree that you create a SEO checklist, especially when starting out. My checklists helped me learn the various techniques and I have continued to add to it as I learn more and more. It’s more like a Top 100 list now
Hi guys
I think it’s a great idea to have an SEO checklist because there are too many vital things to try to remember. It may be something we can develop in the YOTA forum and share. I have made a note to put a request into the forum after this competition.
The information here on SEO practices are tips that should eventually help make one a successful internet marketer or increase the success of one already there.
I have much to learn and keep a list of do’s and don’ts to refer to when I am about to take some step or another in my pursuit of my goals.
Thanks again Sean.
When it comes to permalinks, one thing to remember if you’re setting up a self-hosted blog using a Content Management System, is not all systems automatically generate SEO friendly URLs. It may be up to you to activate this feature. Otherwise, the URL will be an SQL statement embedded in cryptic looking URL that is virtually useless from the SEO perspective.
Thanks Don! I found that with another blog I was working on, all the posts had numerical or what I class as “gibberish” endings! Had to manually change settings to utilise SEO friendly headings within the link.
I guess most people think mainly about on-page SEO, but incorporating off page SEO as well as Social Media into your SEO practices is really important.
I am still astonished how many page views result from articles or comments I leave on other sites. So this is definitely working for me.
Thank you for the information on 3 areas not to ignore.
It’s habitual to think about online SEO but not so much offline SEO and social sites.
Linking will be great for my niche blog especially when I link to complimentary product or information sites or sites with similar content. It will be very exciting to see the outcome when I take action and set all of this knowledge in motion.
Thanks Sean, for the tips on the best SEO practices – 3 areas not to ignore!
Hopefully I am getting better with my on page SEO. I had been learning a lot lately about how to use things like meta descriptions, site maps & site navigation, h1, h2, h3 tags, ensuring my permalink structure is SEO friendly, etc.
Even simple things that should be common sense, like using image tags – I hadn’t thought about that much until I learned the search engine spiders don’t “read” an image, so it’s quite vital to have the keyword description tag with the image, for the spiders to crawl.
My off page SEO still needs a lot of work – but I know now that it’s vital to be using things like social media, blog comments, bookmarking sites, article directories, & so on, to help me point relevant links to my web pages! I especially need to work on social media techniques, better utilising things like Facebook Fanpages, that are available for all, but I haven’t even looked into yet…
Great post & I look forward to reading up a lot more on your other search engine optimisation ideas in your other articles!
Sounds like you are getting the hang of SEO quite well Mel, you will find that it all becomes quite natural as time progresses. Glad to hear the tips came in handy for you
I like doing SEO work, but the information in this comp has made me sharpen up some poor practices such as skipping inserting image tags and using h1, h2 headings etc.
I have probably focused more on keywords and left it at that. Internal linking was always a habit, but neglected in my blogging activities.
There is so much you can do and learn until you have mastered best seo practices, its unbelievable.
I think I am ok by now with on-page SEO, but I can do a lot more Off page SEO. That’s the good thing (and the challenge) – you can always do a bit more
Hi Sean,
Thanks for the great list of best SEO practices. I’m still learning to apply all of them and get my post to the top three results on page one of Google. I still have a lot of work to do both with on page and off page SEO.
I still have to consciously work at applying my SEO strategies. It’s still not second nature for me yet.
This is information that all serious bloggers and website content writers need to heed. I just made a link to it on my website in the section helpful blogs and articles – a new section that has been inspired in this comp. Doing this means I am also doing SEO – linking to authoratative sites!
Great post on SEO (which is very relevant for an SEO website
Being reminded about the best SEO practices is always a great read and even better when I can sit and not because I am doing certain points. When I see that some sites have MILLIONS of backlinks and nearly faint – I can see how!