SEO, or search engine optimization, helps your website get found by the search engines for appropriate search queries. And it’s not just for the overall site – it’s for each page of the site, too! This SEO primer gives you the elements where you’ll need to focus to get your optimization efforts started.

• Keyword Research
  Start with the Google Analytics and Google Search Console available for your site. Look at what pages are visited most often and what searchers are typing in to get there. If the queries are good matches, you’re off to a good start. If not, you have a bit more work to do, but it’s not impossible to fix. After that, use the Google Keyword Tool to take a peek at what other queries people are using to find your goods or services. Edit this list to fit your business, and you’ve got a great start on your SEO.
• Title Tags
  This is the first place the search engines look to determine what the page is about. Your title tags should be keyword-rich and descriptive without going overboard into keyword stuffing.
• Meta Descriptions
  Each page should have a unique meta description. This is the information about the page that shows in the search engine results pages (SERPs). In addition to using your keywords for the search engines’ benefit, you’ll also need to make the content read well to the human eye. This ensures searchers want to click through to your site.
• On-Page Content
  There is a specific percentage of times the search engines look for your keywords within your overall copy on each page. Though the search engines won’t release what exactly that percentage is, most SEO practitioners and SEO plugins have an educated guess. This is your keyword concentration. You risk not being indexed for terms you want to be found for when you fall below this percentage. If you go above this percentage, you risk being “punished” for keyword stuffing.
• Image Alt Data
  This piece is often overlooked. While it’s not necessarily the most important piece of the SEO puzzle, it tells the search engines what they’re “seeing” in your images. When your image is indexed for a particular keyword, the page it’s associated with on your site is also indexed. This helps pages within your site be found for even more terms.

At Asterisk Creative, our SEO team stays on top of SEO best practices and changes to the search engines’ algorithms, so we know how to implement these items in the manner that will best help your business. Seem like too much to take on for yourself? We get it! Contact us for SEO help today!