Keyword

Choosing a keyword or search term is the number 1 thing to do when planning an optimisation campaign.  Picking your battle at this stage can make success more likely. Look for a popular long tail searches (easier said than done!).

Top Tip: Don't worry too much about Meta tag Keywords. Google has not used this for a few years now.

Title Tag

Title tags appear at the very top of the screen when you are on a website. They are also the bold blue line of text that appears in search engine result page.  Try to keep the title tag to 9-12 words for optimum results. Use the most important keywords first. Good title tags can be enough to get page one listings for lots of un competitive local search terms.

To tip: Don't try and target too many keywords on anyone page. All this does is dilute relevancy.

Meta Description

The description should be 18-24 words - it usually appears on the search engine results page under the hyperlink text. It should be a keyword rich summary of the web page, . It should be descriptive and compelling to invite more clicks

Top Tip: Make sure you have a different meta description for every page on your site.

Links

This has to be the most powerful factor for determining search engine positioning.  One way Links are needed from multiple relevant websites using the appropriate keyword in the anchor text.

Top Tip: Don’t bother with reciprocal links! One way links are what Google are looking for.

Content

This is the most obvious and often over looked particularly by people obsessed with optimisation.  Relevant, unique, interesting copy  that is keyword rich is the most straight forward way to obtain good search results.  The whole idea of search engines is to return the most relevant website for the search term used. Having a website with unique relevant content ensures this.

Top tip: Don’t fill your page with spam! Don’t just repeat keywords over and over.