Search engine optimization can also be defined as a set of rules that website (or blog) owners can follow to optimize their websites for search engines and thus improve their search engine rankings. It is also a great way to improve the quality of their websites by making them user-friendly and quick to navigate. The most important aspect of search engine optimization is how effectively you can use SEO to help bring in more traffic, leads and sales for your business.
What search engines are looking for
Search engines want to do their job as efficiently as possible by directing users to specific sites and content that is most relevant to what the user is looking for. So, how is relevancy defined?
Content: determined by the topic given, the text on the page and the titles and descriptions given.
Performance: how fast is your site running and is it working properly?
Authorship: does your site have good enough content to link to other authoritative sites or utilize other authoritative sites that use your site as a reference?
User experience: what does the site look like? Is it easy to navigate? Does it look secure?
What search engines are definitely not looking for
Search engine spiders only have a certain amount of memory to store data, so if you’re trying to trick them, you’re likely hurting yourself in the long run. Elements that search engines don’t want:
Excessive use of keywords on your pages.
Poor user experience: simplify the user experience. Too many ads that make it difficult for people to find something they really need will only increase the rate of unnecessary hits.
Optimize for different types of results
Make sure you focus on optimizing for mobile and tablets as well as other mediums.
Create multimedia content such as videos, as it’s easier to get a video to rank on the first page than it is to get a plain text page to rank.
Optimize your non-text content so that search engines can see it. If your site uses Flash or PDF files, make sure you read the latest guidelines so that search engines can scan this content and give you a score for your site.
Focus on your metadata
Your content on your site should have title tags and meta descriptions.
Meta keywords are now largely ignored by search engines, but if you are still using them, make sure they are relevant to that particular page and also formatted correctly.
Your meta description should be unique.