What is SEO?
What is SEO, and why it is important?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a technique you can use
to increase traffic to your site. Pages
using excellent SEO tactics are more likely to appear close to the top of a search
engine results page (SERP). This is
important because most people only look at the top search results on a page, so
pages that don’t appear in these top results are unlikely to be clicked on. Though
it sounds technical, SEO tactics aren’t difficult to use.
Why do we need SEO?
This thermal map, from
SEOmoz.org, shows where people look
on a search engine results page—the upper left corner, a.k.a. the top search
results.
Studies have shown that people don’t look past
the first page of the search results. In fact, most people look “above the
fold,” which is the part of the website that is visible before scrolling down.
Source: EDEN Team
Use your keywords
General Keyword Guidelines:
- Don’t overuse; you want to sound natural to your
audience
- Write how your audience thinks, especially with
keywords
- “honors programs” versus “academic merit”
- Keep paragraphs to less than 70 words
- Try to use your keyword at least three times on
your page—this includes titles
- Use the keyword research tools to find
variations to use throughout
- Be useful and relevant with keywords and content
- If someone found your page, would they stay?