I watched this video recently from Matt Cutts, from Google, on what are the top five SEO areas to concentrate your efforts on and wanted to give you a synopsis and additional insights from my own point of view. Matt’s video is excellent, so make sure to check it out as well.
1. Have a website, domain, be crawable, don’t hide or lock down important content.
Seems like a no-brainer here right? But you would be surprised at the number of people who still don’t have their own domain, are using free services for their website, or hide their best content behind a wall trying to get email addresses to read their best content. Don’t do that!
2. Include the right words on the page and especially in query type phrases.
You’d think that this would be common sense, but this is easily overlooked. I’ve seen sites include their important keywords in images (that are not readable by the Googlebot) or forget to include top phrases completely on the home page which is their most important page for Google.
3. Think not about link building but rather creating converting or compelling content.
This is a hard one for many people to grasp. Google wants to spider content that actually provides value to your readers not just a brochure of your services. Sites that invest in creating shareable content that is more than a listing of services will receive better rankings.
Now here’s an interesting note from the video, Matt says don’t just invest in search placement widen your reach consider other avenues including paid advertising, billboard, and other ways to get your message out to your audience. Broaden your marketing plan for a wider appeal.
4. Craft your Meta title and Meta description carefully.
These two source code tags are top real estate for websites. Special attention should be paid to create great tags that are more than a listing of keywords and that entice visitors to click in. The Meta description will appear as your snippet in Google.com. Make sure it works to entice readers to click in to your site.
5. Use all the free webmaster resources.
Google has some great and free tools to use to understand what is happening with your website. Make sure you are using the Google Webmaster Control Panel and Google Analytics to know what is happening on your website.