SEO is essential to get your website to appear in the search results from Google, Bing, and other search engines. Two of the fundamentals are Metadata and Keywords. Before we dive in, just what the heck is SEO anyway?
According to Wikapedia…
“Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.[1][2] SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as “natural” or “organic” results) rather than direct traffic or paid traffic.”
The idea is to use words and phrases that people looking for information on a topic are likely to enter into Google or Bing or any other search engine. If your website uses these phrases in your content in a way that flows well when read by people, you are likely to rank higher in the search engine results page. This in turn can translate into more visitors and potential customers.
As an online entrepreneur, you need to make sure your site has implemented an evergreen SEO strategy for the best search engine optimization possible. When something is evergreen, it means that it’s a strategy that remains viable despite the passing of time.
You can publish content one year and it’ll still be search-worthy and relevant even years down the road. There are many scammy traffic trends that will come and go, allowing unethical or desperate individuals to game the system for a short time.
But search engines always catch onto these measures, and it could be something that penalizes your site from getting the traffic you’re working so hard to generate. Make sure you implement a solid SEO plan so that your site thrives and is able to compete in your niche.
Understanding Invisible Metadata
One good SEO practice has to do with your site’s metadata. Metadata is just information. But the job of this data is to boost the visibility of your website in search engines.
Knowing how to use metadata, can lead to your site drawing in a bigger audience and potential buyers for your products because metadata can position you above your competitors.
What does metadata do?
The metadata on your website includes your title and all of the information about the pages on your website. Search engines use this information to understand what the content is about on your site.
The metadata also supplies information to search engines on each individual page. This information tells the search engine when the site is crawled by bots if your site is appropriately connected to whatever search terms the audience is using.
If it is, then your site will be displayed as one of the results. The algorithm that search engines such as Google use determines whether or not the site is of any value.
If you don’t have evergreen SEO practices with metadata in place, your site becomes outdated and without the right metadata, the bots can’t accurately pinpoint a description. This can cause you to rank lower in search results.
Why is Metadata Important?
You want to be able to compete for traffic, which means you need to know exactly what search engines like to see from metadata details. One of these things is known as meta tags.
This clues the search engine into what your site is about. These tags are just little bits of information or text that explain what the content is on your site. No one will actually see these tags when they’re on your site because they’re invisible.
They’re located in the source code of your pages. To see an example, you can go to any website – whether it’s your own or a well-known one – and right-click on the page so that a popup box appears.
Every bit of metadata on your site can increase your ranking in search engines. If you don’t know what the metadata in a source code does, simply look some up on a website, copy it and paste it into a search engine.
You’ll get an explanation of what it is and why it’s important. Some examples of metadata you want to use because search engines like them are ones like title tags. You need to use keywords in your titles.
Your page description is an important part of your metadata. You can also use your headings and subheadings for metadata. And you want to use metadata in your alt text, too – which just stands for alternative text and has to do with images on your website.
Alt text just explains the image in a way so that the bots can understand it since they can’t visually crawl an image and see what it’s about. You have to tell it, and most people fail to do this in their blog posts.
The Importance of Optimized Keywords
In order for your site to rank well and draw in traffic, you have to use optimized keywords. To do this, you need to understand what they are. When you practice keyword optimization, it means that you’ve done your homework and you’ve researched which keywords are designed specifically to draw an audience in from the search engine words the person uses.
It’s important to practice keyword optimization, because not only does it boost traffic, but it can help translate into sales as well. When used correctly, keywords act as bridges to get the search engine to the right material on your website.
What is a Keyword?
A keyword is a word that’s associated with the information that a search engine processes for people. It must be significant and relevant in order to matter. It acts as a guide.
For example, if you type in the word job, you’ll get thousands of responses across a number of search engine results pages. These results will be for a variety of jobs – most of them not even related to the results.
However, if you type in “engineering jobs,” then you’ll get results that are for engineers or related – rather than something like “swimming instructor.” There are different types of keywords.
A broad keyword gives results just the way it sounds. The results are broad. If you search for “cats” you get several breeds, information about cat care, adoptions, and more.
You could use the keyword “refrigerators” and several different brands will come up giving you a bigger range of information that may or may not be what you’re looking for.
If you type the word “shoes” into the search engine, you’ll get results for men’s, women’s, and children’s shoes. You’ll also get results that show a variety of stores associated with selling shoes or ones that perform shoe repair services.
Why use Long-tail Keywords?
A broad keyword can use one word or more than one word, but usually never more than three. When you’re looking for specific search results, you want to use long-tail keywords.
An example of this would be “hairless cat for sale.” Or, “women’s red tennis shoes.” Long tail keywords usually result in better sales because the person searching is wanting that product or information already.
So using specific keywords can help you tap into that audience. To find keywords, you can use a keyword search tool. There are free ones online, but you can also use a paid one.
When you go onto a keyword search tool, you can type in a word such as dieting. After you do that, you’ll get a list of potential keywords. You might see ones such as “keto diet,” “keto dieting,” “paleo diet,” or “juice cleanse diet.”
The search tool will often tell you the number of searches every month. This is how many people are looking for that information. A search tool may also tell you the competition ranking for that keyword as well as other relevant information.
It may seem like a bit of a pain to add this type of information to your site but please don’t ignore it. Without it, your site will most likely not show up in the search engine results, resulting in you losing a great source of free traffic.
If you are building your site in WordPress, a plugin like YOAST SEO can be a great help. I use it to help remind me of the SEO work I need to do and make it easy for me to do it.
Stay tuned for part 2…..
