SEO Techniques

SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) helps internet viewers find a website more organically. Performing certain techniques when you update and maintain your website will help it rank higher on Google's search engine.

'''Where do we optimize? '''

All main entry points for the website:


 * Home Page


 * Category pages

'''What to optimize? '''
 * marketing – specific landing pages

1) URLS – URLS should be short, (less than 256 characters, less than 4 directories deep )

Words should be separated by hyphens

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">USE KEYWORD in URL

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">2) Pages: 250-600 words of CONTENT. This content should be unique to your site and updated often. Fresh content will help improve your SEO rank.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Keyword DENSITY should be 3-5%

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Repeat keyword phrase more heavily ABOVE THE FOLD. This means that viewers should see your keywords and what your webpage describes before having to scroll down the page to see the rest of the content.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">3) Title Tag: A title tag highlights what is important on the page for the search engine. This is also the 1st piece of code that will be read by a crawler. The title tag is also included on the SERP (Search Engines Results Page).

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Whatever keywords you are optimized for will be BOLDED on SERP so make sure to include 1-2 keywords in the title tag.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Separate phrase from the rest of the title using colon, space, hyphen

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Search engines TRUNCATE the SERP at 65 characters.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">4) Meta Description: 2-3 sentences about what your website is. The first sentence needs to catch attention of the viewer who is searching for your site. The second sentence needs to be a CALL TO ACTION that will encourage viewers to click on your website link.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Insert a KEYWORD phrase once per sentence. These will also be bolded on the SERP.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Only use 120-160 characters because search engines truncate these as well.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">5) ALT TAGS – EVERY IMAGE should have an alt tag . These are captions and descriptions of photos and images on your websites that appear when the mouse hovers over them. Search engines can't crawl images or recognize them, so alt tags are extremely important! In addition, be sure to provide captions to every single one of your photos and images.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Keywords should be 5-10% of alt tags and captions.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">6) Headlines – Headlines indicate importance of content. Be sure to include a KEYWORD here. Your SEO value is also partially based on text size so make your headlines larger than the rest of your content. It also helps viewers quickly find what they are looking for and don't become overtired.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">7) Internal Linking – This is key to help viewers stay on your website longer. If you provide helpful links in relevant keyword phrases, you can provide viewers with additional information that they were searching for.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">These are a few possible areas on your website to provide internal links:


 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Page Content (MOST IMPORTANT)


 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">site navigation


 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">site footer

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">OTHER RESEARCH:
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">site map

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">1) Monitor where you stand – Keep an eye on pagerank – google toolbar. Track with Google Analytics where your visitors are coming from and how they’re finding your site

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">2) KEYWORDS – place keywords throughout every aspect of your site: titles, content, URLS, and image names. TITLE TAG and PAGE HEADER are the 2 most important spots to put keywords – Don’t keyword stuff though!

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">3) INTERNAL LINKING – easy way to boost traffic to individual pages. Don’t use excessive linking – visitors become annoyed. Make text search-engine friendly - not just click here link

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">4) Create a sitemap – makes it easier for spiders to search your site. Google has some program that you can use for free

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">5) Search friendly URLs – name them with clear keywords. ***Can shorten URLs somehow – get more info

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">6) AVOID FLASH – looks pretty, but does nothing for your SEO. Use sparingly. Place text and navigation links near the flash

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">7) ALT TAGS – spiders can’t search images. Make words associated with your images as descriptive as possible. KEYWORDS make awesome descriptions. ADD CAPTIONs to images.

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">8) Content – UPDATE REGULARLY; crucial for increasing traffic. Not just new info – needs to be useful too. INTEGRATE A BLOG – excellent way to reach out to market, create more opportunities for internal and external linking, while giving site more personal voice

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">9) Social Media Distribution – Multiple social networking platforms – exponentially multiplies the number of places where visitors will view your links – RSS FEED for blogs

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">10) Link to others: develop relationships with other sites; Ask for link referrals and link trades – BUILD LINKJUICE – everyone wins! Don’t use links that have poor web-reputations like link farms.

<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Keywords: Look for high searched terms that produce a lot of volume. In addition, look for terms that have less competition. An easy way to rank for certain keywords is to make phrases out of your keyword.

Here are some examples of keywords to use in your websites:


 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Temple Hill Events
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Temple Hill Oakland CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">LDS Temple Oakland CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">LDS temples CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints California
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Oakland, CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Oakland, CA Temple
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Mormon temple Oakland, CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Mormon temple CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Temple hill Choir
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Temple Hill Symphony Orchestra
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Temple hill Orchestra
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Temple Hill Dance Company
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Behold Dance Collective
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Behold Dance Collective Oakland
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Mormon choir CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">LDS choir CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints choir CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Mormon orchestra CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">LDS orchestra CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints orchestra CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Mormon dance company CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">LDS dance company CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dance company CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Oakland choir auditions
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Oakland dance auditions
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Oakland orchestra auditions
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Family entertainment Oakland CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Free events Oakland CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Free things to do Oakland CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Free things to do Bay Area
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Fun things to do Oakland or Bay area
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Free family events Oakland
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Free cultural arts events Oakland CA
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Free dance performances Oakland
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Free choir performances Oakland
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Free orchestra performances Oakland
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Events in the bay area
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Free events San Francisco
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints events
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">LDS church events Bay area
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">LDS church events Oakland
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Easter events Bay area
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">LDS Easter performance Oakland
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">LDS dance performance Oakland
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">LDS choir performance Oakland
 * <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">LDS orchestra performance Oakland

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