Pat

SEO crash course

A couple of friends asked me about SEO for their new fitness website.  My brief response:

Books have been written on the subject, an industry exists, but my quick short summary…

Think keywords with just about everything that goes up on every web page.  What top 5 keywords do you want for your site?  Pick ~5 in your niche based on what people are actually searching for the most, or what they might be searching for in the future — plug search terms into Google Insights for Search.  Focus on those keywords, find a way to use them often, and naturally.

Put the important words (in text) as early as possible on your pages, but again, fit it all in naturally.  Use synonyms and variations of key-words & -phrases on your pages.

Beyond content, there are some technical web page source aspects that are important to search engines:

• Title of the web page - what you see in the titlebar at the top of your browser
• URL of the web page - use “friendly URLs” if possible
  
  • Worthless: http://example.com/articleDetail.php?id=5
  • Better, but lacks strong multiple keywords: http://example.com/An_Ounce_of_Prevention_a_Pound_of_Cure
  • Juicy: http://example.com/fitness_helps_prevent_disease
• Inbound links to your web pages - partner.  Get a post published or re-published by one of the bigger dogs in your industry.  Ideally if you’re selling organic juice, the link should look like organic juice, and would be surrounded by other contextually relevant words like ‘San Diego’ and ‘pulp-free’.  Random regular links from your buddy’s blog with no context are usually a waste of time; 1 authoritative site properly linking to you is better than 50 or so nobodies
• META description - use those keywords, but keep in mind that people searching will most likely read this description in their search results
  
  • Nice & user-friendly, but could definitely add more relevant keywords: “Welcome to Hone Fitness and Health!”
  • Juicy: “San Diego fitness, bodybuilding, and health store, serving North County and East County.  Buy the best organic juice, smoothies, and muscle tees.”

SEO methods will change over time, and there are many other little things you can do to improve SEO and traffic right now, but I think this is a good primer for those who are both curious and resourceful.  Needless to say, it’s imperative to have good content.