Are you feeling 'optimized' now.
Yeah? Then let's optimize your web page. The main way to do that is make awesome shit that people like, consistently! The more people share and link to your content, the more Google likes you because that means your content is relevant to people who find it. And Google’s entire existence depends on providing relevant search results.
Good content means it’s well written, easy to read with no spelling errors or grammatical mistakes. I know that's a lot to ask from the texting generation, but c’mon people, it’s lose, not loose, your, not you’re.
Optimize heading tags the right way. Include keywords in these tags you want people to find your site with, but don’t go overboard. Like if we were optimizing for a Sexy Ghost Costume we would make that the H1 for the main header of a page.
Headers identify important text for a sites readers, and search engines feel the same way. The multiple types of headings help create a hierarchy of importance on the page and should be used in a cascading fashion. So don’t have a bunch of H3’s and no H2’s. When writing headings, make it like an outline, and don’t put a bunch on the page. Use them sparingly.
How about images, here is an image of me. Damn I am fine. But if there is no alt tag, then Googlebot doesn’t know it’s my fine ass up in this picture. Also if the image didn’t load properly, that alt tag would show up in it’s place, and then the user would obviously keep reloading the page until it shows up. If your image names and alt tags are correct, they will show up in Google image search too. Lets search for my images and see, ah yah, looks like there are a few, don’t get too distracted.
Next, Google loves links, it’s how their crawlers get around the web. So Link text is important, this is the text that gets placed between the anchor tags, what a user clicks on. Usually it’s underlined or a different color to draw attention to it. Don’t link text something like “Click HERE”. Googlebot doesn’t know what the hell ‘here’ is. It’s better to make it an accurate description of what it’s linking to. So if we wrote a blog about sexy ghost costumes and wrote, Check out our sexy ghost costumes click here, and only linked ‘click here’, that would be incorrect. We want the link to be ‘sexy ghost costumes’ instead.
A few more rules for content are, don’t duplicate. Google hates this. If you do change a URL on your site you need to do a permanent redirect, also known as a 301 redirect from the old to the new URL. And try to keep your URL’s clean, without query strings, which are sometimes used in URL’s on dynamic websites to pass info to the server during a HTTP request.
Last, don’t overdo it and stuff a bunch of keywords into your writing, don’t try and hide keyword text and DON’T get obsessed with SEO. Think about what your users want, not what the search engine wants. If users like your content and you do the basic SEO things correctly, you’ll be fine.
Hope you can keep it up for one more lesson.
Questions or Comments?