Ah yes! SEO. Chances are your ears may have caught this buzzword in conversations with other webmasters, Info Technicians, and or other business owners. But do you know what the term stands for and what it actually means?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. The definition of Search Engine Optimization is “the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results”, per moz.com. Notice that social media is NOT mentioned in SEO. That’s because social media marketing and SEO are two separate things. Neither have any direct or significant impact on each other.
While I will not get into everything that entails SEO because its so much more complex than what I offer in and of my services. But I will focus on SEO as it pertains to a website itself. There are many things that can be done within the website, that help boost it’s SEO capabilities that don’t have to come at additional costs. Much of it goes into the screenshot of the way my website shows up on the web.
1) Page/Site Titles. The page title is the reading of the website name in the larger font. Having this is an absolute must so that the search engines and visitors know what your site and each of the pages are about. There is a recommended limit by google of 50-60 characters maximum for the Page Titles. If you go beyond those limits, the page titles may end up getting cut out of full view on mobile.
2) Meta Descriptions. This would be the paragraphs below the Page/Site Title. The Meta Description provides a brief summary of the essence of the page. It should match the content of the webpage and if possible include the page title. In order to maximize the impact of the meta description, adding a call to action using phrased like “learn more about” and “contact us today” is a subtle thing that increases the number of clicks on the page.
3) Slugs. What are slugs? Nope. They’re not yucky bugs. They’re the page names in URL form like https://www.jgraphiccom.com/portfolio. The “portfolio” part of the URL is the slug. Having a slug that is using the same navigation or page title, further solidifies the page’s SEO ratings.
4) Alt-Text. Alt-text (alternative text) is a word or phrase added to a document (commonly images) to tell Web site viewers the nature or contents of that image. Typically you want to include the same web page name along with the phrase that describes the image. This is especially key to access for users with disabilities. These descriptions are read out-loud to a blind person so they’re able to understand what is in front of them.
What ties these 4 aspects all together??? A focus keyword is a word that describes the content on your page or post best. All 4 elements I listed should be consistent, with everything revolving around the keyword. I hope you enjoyed this little bit of information on what can be done with your website as it pertains to SEO settings that won’t cost you a dime…the catch now is that all of these things can be done through a specific plugin for Wordpress sites. Feel free now to message me for more details!