Chances are, if you stumbled upon this blog, you did so by clicking through from the search engine results page (SERP) filled with answers to your question. There’s a great reason why that happened – we specifically optimized this blog for your exact search. We included the right words (in this blog, we tried to rank for the keywords “Riverside SEO”), the right number of times, and all in the correct spots so search would choose us as the most relevant response to your request.  That’s SEO in a nutshell.

SEO really comes down to formatting the information on your website in a way that that allows search engines to rate you as an authority on related subjects. As in the old west’s snake oil salesmen, SEO has its own dubious claims. In this blog, we address a couple widely accepted misconceptions related to SEO, and provide a few helpful ways tactics you can use to rank for the keywords you want.

The Don’ts of Riverside SEO

Riverside SEO companies (and other very well-meaning marketing companies) will promote the creation of “relevant” or “good” content. In spite of how intuitive this may seem the truth is a bit more complicated. That is because Google and Bing (and other search engines) do not accept content the way humans do. Let’s jump in our time machine back to school. During a lesson, you may ask your history teacher “Why did John Wilkes Booth shoot Abraham Lincoln?” Fair question. And, if your teacher was anything like MY high school history professor, she may dive in to an hour-long lecture on why – you would get the complete, unabridged, answer. By definition, that would be “relevant”, “good” content. But if a search engine was in the class, this is how it would hear that answer:

Student: “Why did John Wilkes Booth shoot Abraham Lincoln?”

Professor: “Blah blah blah… Booth… blah blah blah…Lincoln”

It looks like the search engine is tuning out, but the truth is that as of this moment, search algorithms aren’t totally capable of reading into the context of an answer without needing to rely on keywords. So how should your teacher have answered that question in an SEO friendly way? Like so:

Student: “Why did Booth shoot Lincoln?”

Professor: “Booth shot Lincoln because…”

 This is a subtle, yet wildly important, difference. When you restate the question in your answer, in the exact format (or very similar) the search engine “sees” that your content answers the exact question posited.

At the end of the day, the main of search engines is to provide the best possible answers to the questions entered in a search. Search engines like Google and Bing don’t like displaying poorly constructed answers, so when you enter the exact phrases included in the question, search engines can be certain you’re the right answer.

So, why not fill your ENTIRE website with all of the right phrases? That leads us to our next MASSIVE don’t of Riverside SEO: KEYWORD STUFFING.

In 2007, keyword stuffing was a SUPER popular way to try to rank for a whole bunch of keywords. SEO “experts” would fill Title Tags, Alt-Text, H2’s, and Meta-Descriptions with a variety of non-relevant keywords in an attempt to climb up the SERPs. A company in Chile would try to get on the SERPs for Riverside SEO, even though their company was selling web design in Lisbon, just based on how many times they had the keywords Riverside SEO written on, or in, their website. Search engines learned fast and eventually penalized companies who employed such tactics.

So, if there’s all of these things that you shouldn’t do, what CAN you do to improve your SEO? I’m glad you asked.

The Do’s of Riverside SEO

For all of its rules, SEO is not nearly as difficult as it seems. For your edification, I have created a super easy to follow mini checklist you can use to craft relevant, good, and SEO friendly content. Check it out:

1. Think of the exact keyword you want your page to rank for
   1. For this page, it was “Riverside SEO”.
2. Incorporate the exact keyword you want to rank for in that page
   1. Throwing out the phrase Riverside SEO in a normal conversation isn’t very common or helpful, but if you were searching for a Riverside SEO company on a search engine, then a blog on the subject actually makes a little sense.
3. Format your page correctly
   1. This is where things get funky. It would be awesome if search engines would be able to “get” your content. But that’s not possible yet, because search engines are reliant on computers indexing content – not humans. Even though search engines have progressed in the recent years and are WAY more adept at doing so, they still need help. What does that mean for your site’s content? It means you need to be intentional about updating H1 tags, Title Tags, and Meta Descriptions. Be sure to include your desired keyword in all of these fields. For help on how to do this, you can view this super helpful BEST PRACTICES GUIDE created by MOZ.
4. Don’t skip the Image Alt Text
   1. Until computers learn how to view images on their own, thus enabling them to see things the way a human can, we need to help them along. Adding relevant descriptions of your pictures, that also include your desired keyword, helps search engines understand what their crawlers are supposed to be “seeing”.

Conclusion

The reality is, I want SEO to be simpler. I wish it was just as easy as following this guide. But it’s not. In SEO, just like life, things are more complicated than a 4-point checklist. There are over 200 different factors that comprise a search engine ranking. Most people and businesses don’t have the time to optimize for the keywords they want. But, when you follow these easy steps, you can dramatically increase your chances of ranking

That’s all for today! Stay tuned for more helpful tips on how to optimize your business for SEO by visiting our blog.

Cheers,

Your Riverside SEO Company