Tynan's Anger

Lately, a lot of my friends have been asking me to give them the basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If you want to work online in any context now, and especially in online content production, you can't go into a job interview clueless about what SEO is or how it works. No doubt if you work in online media, you have had to explain SEO to someone who has no idea about the workings of the web . I just pray you don't have to do it to your grandparents like I did. In any event, here's my quick, painless, bare-bones guide to how to optimize a website for search engines.

Basically, there are three points to keep in mind:

• Site structure: Make sure that your page is indexable (meaning that Google can read it). There are certain ways to tweak your page's code to make it rank higher on Google without even adjusting the content. You must also have new content posted regularly, or else your pages will dip in search rankings.
  
• Content/keywords. Research which terms would be best to target for search. Once you've picked your keywords, add them to the important areas of a page (such as the heading and description tags), and make them appear frequently in your text. A general rule of thumb is that the closer a keyword is to the beginning of a section, the higher the page will rank for that term. This works for titles and headers (Theater Review: Play X) and for body text (Play X is a good show). Putting keywords in bold and italics helps.
• Links. This is the bread and butter of SEO and the part that's truly variable. You should link internally at every relevant opportunity, and link out to other pages too to build connections. But the true sign of status of your website is how many external sites link to your page, and the reputation of the sites that link to you. The more links you get, the better you will rate on search engines. Of course, acquiring good links takes time, reputation, and dedication, and more than a little grassroots work on your part. But good content, good contacts, and persistence gets links, which gets traffic from Google.
  

Anyone who knows about SEO knows how simplistic this explanation is. But I hope this guide will help for those who are utterly clueless, or those who can't think of a right way of framing SEO to their clueless relatives (or employers).

Labels: 30 second guies, how-to, seo