Bruce Clay

Effective SEO (search engine optimization) is critical for any business that has a website. You want your business’s website to show up on that first page when people search for what you’re selling, and that’s where SEO comes into play. Here you’ll find the key components of a website that should be crafted with care to help a web page rank, the server status codes that help or hinder SEO, and advanced search operators that will have you searching the web like a pro.

Domain names are an important part of your SEO strategy. If you don’t yet have a website domain name registered, you may be surprised to learn that you have a lot of options open to you besides ending your website name with .com. First, a little lesson in domain name anatomy. A URL is made up of several parts: You’re probably most familiar with the following top-level domains (TLDs): .

Search engine optimization (SEO) requires some technical knowledge about how search engines work and how to research what makes sites rank and find out how your competitor sites are successful. The advanced search operators in this table show you how to filter search engine results to find just the information you’re looking for, including limiting your results to just a single site or getting back results where your keyword is used in a page title or URL.

Your hard work on search engine optimization (SEO) won’t matter if your server isn’t set up to properly deliver pages and codes to search engines and your customers. You have to keep your server happy and healthy. Use this table to diagnose server problems, sort out redirects, and ensure that everything is working as it should, and you’ll minimize SEO problems.

Some elements that are important for search engine optimization (SEO) are fairly well hidden in the HTML (programming code) of a page. Sure, you can see a web page’s source code by choosing View Source on each page individually, but that’s time consuming. A tool that can pick out just the important SEO elements and display them together, even for multiple pages simultaneously, is much more efficient!

Google Analytics is free software that helps website owners understand what’s going on with their online business. Besides collecting and analyzing data, you can set SEO goals — specific actions that you want website visitors to take. As you see how well those goals are being met, you can evaluate how effective your site is and make improvements as needed.

Search engine optimization starts on your own website. Focus on ensuring that your content, server setup, and internal links communicate expertise and professionalism to search engines and visitors. Strive to make your website equal to your competitors first, and then focus on surpassing them. As you work to improve your website, stay organized by using this checklist to coordinate your SEO campaign: Do keyword research.

Themes are the foundation and keywords are the building blocks of your website SEO campaign. To optimize your website to attract search engine traffic, you need to know the topics and keywords to focus your web pages on. Some great tools for keyword research are available online. The most popular free keyword research tool might just be Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner.