It would be easy to say SEO is easy peasy lemon squeezy but sadly it’s not that straight forward. Like everything else it does have its ‘basics’ which gives one a pretty decent starting point; the road from there is literally endless! Based on this, here’s the SEO Basics in the form of the A-Z Alphabets. Once you know these terms and tips, you’re in a very good place in the SEO industry…

A – Analytics

Analysis and research – it’s one of the basics of an SEO’s life. Using Google Analytics is always a good place to start with any old or new website. Use it to analyse traffic and dig deep to give you a better understanding of any website, including goal conversions or the lack of them.

Here are a number of articles we’ve written on Google Analytics.

B – Blogging

That is literally what I’m doing right now! Search engines love fresh and new content. The old saying  ‘content is king’ might not quite be 100% true any more, but it still holds a lot of water. Blogging is one of the easiest ways to get regularly updated content on any website and keep those little search engine robots coming back for more all the time.

Here are some articles on Blogging from the Epiphany blog.

C – Coding

Fortunately for some (and unfortunately for others), SEO is not a stand-alone art in itself. It ‘steals’ knowledge from other industries all the time, and Web Development is one of them! A good understanding and knowledge of HTML coding and CSS is always a good thing to have. A SEO needs to inspect the HTML codes and make sure things are being rendered properly, both to the users and robots on the internet.

Here are some posts which touch on Web Development.

D – Domain

A domain for SEO means a lot of things. It could be the domain name, trust or authority which are all important things to know. Picking a domain name is a two way thing – you could decide to go for a brand specific URL or for the keyword rich domain. They both have their advantages and can be used together or separately, depending on what one is trying to achieve.

Domain trust and authority on the other hand is about the strength of a domain or website on the internet. The higher the trust and authority of a domain, the better online visibility (which I’ll talk about later) you’re bound to get from that website.

E – Errors (HTTP 404s)

Web page errors once again are associated with Web Development but knowing the basic web page error messages goes a long way in SEO because there are lots of benefits to be had from them. For instance, a 404 error page means a web page cannot be found. This means there’s a broken connection somewhere and it is a lost link. It is an opportunity to recreate connection and link properly to a website. This leads to a better user experience and accessibility for a website.

F – Facebook

The line between SEO and social media grows thinner by the day, meaning it’s getting harder to not connect the two together. This means using Facebook to aid any SEO campaign, but it needs to be approached with the right strategy. This is where using things like Facebook Pages, likes and share buttons are integrated with websites to strengthen the brand and community engagement online.

G – Google

This is the all mighty Google search engine, whom every SEO works for (or against, as the case may be)! Any decent SEOer would tell you to concentrate on Google and just let Bing and Yahoo tag along. Most websites are optimised for Google because that is where you get the best results. Maybe that will change in the near future, but for now Google, with all its faults and perfection, will continue to be the focus of any SEO campaign.

H – Heading Tags (HTML)

Heading tags are not as powerful as they used to be but they are still pretty useful on any website, for the user experience as well as for robots to know the level of importance of certain keywords. The best way to use heading tags is to include keywords related to the content while still maintaining legibility of the heading tag.

I – Image Optimisation

Image Optimisation is highly understated which is a bit of shame seeing how simple and easy it is to do! Always make image names as descriptive as possible but not necessarily a mouthful. Also make use of the alt tags and title tags when adding images. Once again, these need to be descriptive but simple for search crawlers to classify images and aid image searches by using keywords associated with the images.

J – JavaScript

In the past JavaScript was a bit of a no-no for SEO, partly because search engines found it quite difficult to index. Fortunately, search engines have become savvier when it comes to indexing JavaScript code. That said, nothing beats using HTML code and Advanced CSS from a SEO point of view, so proceed with caution when using JavaScript.

K – Keywords

Keywords are the very basic of the SEO foundation; there’s really not much you can do without them. They are used to search for websites on search engines so a lot of research and analysis needs to go into finding the right ones for each website. They could be as simple as one word and as many as five or six words; they all have their pros and cons. Keywords can make or break a SEO campaign so always take the time to do the research right.

L – Links

The internet is made up of websites which all link to each other, forming a connection or network between these websites. Links make the internet go round from a SEO point of view. No links means a website is invisible. The more links a website has the better and the more links from a trusted domain, even better. Now acquiring these links the right way, that is the question…

Here are some articles about Link Building.

M – Meta Tags

Over the years meta tags have lost their importance in the eyes of search engines due to misuse, but they are still pretty handy for a good user experience. A good, simple and self-explanatory meta description can increase the chances of a click through from a search engine result page to a website, especially one that catches a user’s attention.

Most search engines don’t use meta keywords any more but a few still do, so it’s a good idea to include a decent number of key terms for any website.

This is A to M of the SEO’er Alphabet – stay tuned for my next post which will have N to Z! In the meantime, I welcome any comments!

The second part is available here.

(Photo: Super Stock)