TOP 20 SEO TASKS
Improve your website ranking with little or no money!
Updated 10/08/2024
WHAT IS SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It's a term that refers to the overall process of altering
your website so it ranks better on search engines such as Google. The ultimate goal is to be listed
first on the first page of Google. People rarely look at page 2 of the Google search results.
OVERVIEW
I learned how to design websites in college. However, SEO wasn't really a thing yet. It was possible to
go to the various search engines and submit the name of your website for inclusion. That was about it.
At that time, rankings were based solely only on hits. Website owners would go to their own pages and
hit F5 to refresh the page a few thousand times to move up the list. Things got harder when the search
engines changed the metrics.
Fast forward to today. Paid SEO services can be very expensive. Many services are over a hundred dollars
a month and they can go up from there. Essentially, the SEO company is doing the work for you that you
may be able to do yourself. Therefore, I started seriously learning about SEO. I have read tons articles
and watched at least 200 videos to compile this overview that contains best practices that can be used
for ANY website of ANY topic.
Maintain realistic expectations. In other words, if you’re a small business, you should not try to outdo
a billion-dollar company. You will lose every time. Instead, you want to beat the other local businesses
that are similar in size and scope to your own company. A realistic goal would be to have your website
outperform your primary or local competitor’s website.
SEO can be quite time consuming. The time and effort you put into it, the better you'll do. While some
paid services promise quick results, it’s my experience that normally isn't the case. It will be more of
a slower paced steady growth in traffic. There is no magic bullet. Every website, every marketspace,
every location is different. Results can and will vary greatly.
This overview will briefly cover some of the things you can accomplish yourself and save some money. It
does require that you put time and effort into the process. Always keep SEO in mind when designing your
website. A little extra effort should pay off in increasing viewers and higher Google rankings. Each one
of the things listed here could be expanded into an entire article on its own. (I may write some of
these articles in the future). Let's begin.
HOW DOES GOOGLE RANK WEBSITES?
The actual metrics that Google, Yahoo, Bing and others use to rank websites are not published. This
keeps website designers and SEO experts guessing. Google will change its metrics as many as 100 times a
year. However, the general consensus among SEO experts is that the items mentioned in this article are
very important. It's to your benefit to implement as many of these items as possible on your
site.
1) USE AVAILABLE TOOLS
There are plenty FREE and PAID 3rd party website analysis tools & plugins can aid your SEO tasks. It
also helps to make use of multiple tools. This is like getting a second, third or even fourth opinion.
More information is a good thing! If you have an existing site, the tools will help identify problems
and possibly expose you to new ideas. I recommend starting with the tools that will check your website
for any errors. Fix everything starting with any errors, spelling mistakes, broken links, etc... Once
that’s complete, start working on any of the warnings. Everything you fix can potentially help your page
ranking. You can think of it like the Olympic scoring system. You will get penalties / deductions for
every little thing you do wrong. Strive to eliminate all errors, or warnings.
2) WEBSITE AUTHORITY
One of your goals should be to have high 'website authority'. This is a measure as to how your website
stacks up against competing websites in terms of popularity. Do viewers go to your website first or
someone else's website? Naturally, you'll want score as high as possible for this testing metric. The
problem is, that you can NOT change this directly. It only goes up when the site does better in all
other areas. Fix those and your 'website authority' will increase over time. It may take weeks to notice
an increase.
3) META & LINK TAGS
Meta tags are super important in EVERY PAGE. Link tags are also desirable. Make sure you have all the
common tags as they provide critical information to the search engines. Meta tags include but are not
limited to KEYWORDS, DESCRIPTION, OPEN GRAPH TAGS, CANONICAL, TWITTER CARD and any site verification
tags. Link tags could be used for FAVICONS and CSS files. The 'description' tag is what appears on
Google. You’re allowed 120 characters to describe your page. Be sure to make the most of this limited
but very valuable space. The header section of your webpage can easily exceed the first 60+ lines of
code if you do all the Google recommended items.
4) KEYWORDS & LONG-TAIL KEYWORDS
Keywords are super important, but make sure you research them! A generic keyword such as 'computer' will
make it impossible to get a decent ranking because you’re competing with thousands or even millions of
other computer websites. The keyword can be included, but try to find a niche. Be more specific.
Use a combination of words or a phrase containing 3-4 words known as a 'long-tail
keyword'.
Research your keywords to look for something that you can use that your competition has
overlooked. You want to put yourself in the users place and try to think of what people might type into
the Google search box. This is why the long-tail keywords are almost always better. Use something like
'computer repair in city name'. This will help you to get the local customers you want.
Your home page will likely contain a LOT of keywords - hopefully several dozen! However, all other pages
should have keywords that are specific to that particular page. Google will get confused if you use the
same big batch of keywords for every page. Google will list what it thinks is the most important page
and the other pages may not rank because your competing with yourself. Take the time and come up
with a separate list of keywords for each page. Yes, it's a lot of work!
5) HEADER TAGS
Use h1 and h2 tags on every page. These are intended for the titles on your page. Each tag should
contain one or more of your keywords. The h1,h2 tags are used by Google when ranking and categorizing
pages. The h3 and h4 tags can also be used but carry less weight. When writing content for your website,
include an h1 tag at the top followed with an H2 tag for each new section. You can have multiple h2 tags
but try not to have multiple h1 tags. You also avoid having the same h1 or h2 tags on more than 1
page.
For example:
h1 TITLE with keywords
h2 SECTION 1 with keywords
h3 SUB-SECTION A with keywords
h3 SUB-SECTION B with keywords
h2 SECTION 2 with keywords
h2 SECTION 3 with keywords
and so forth...
6) PAGE NAMING (URL's)
Be descriptive and try to use your keywords in your URL's! Use hyphens instead of underscores in your
URL's to separate words. Underscores may or may not work correctly with search engines. SEO tools will
flag the underscores as a warning. As always, you must be careful when changing URL names. Be sure to
use 301 redirects for any page you rename to avoid broken links. (Broken links and redirects are
discussed below)
For example:
https://meyercomputer.net/123456.htm (Non descriptive)
https://meyercomputer.net/seo.htm (Much easier to read and contains a
keyword)
You can utilize a 301 redirect to accomplish this task.
NOTE: The 301 redirect can be accomplished in different ways depending on your web server. (Apache,
NGINX, IIS etc) Consult your documentation.
7) CANONICALIZE
Canonicalize each page of your your website. It's not technically required, and your visitors will never
it visually. However, Google will penalize your site for not having this feature.
For example:
http://meyercomputer.net
https://meyercomputer.net
http://www.meyercomputer.net
https://www.meyercomputer.net (Recommended Format)
All 4 of these are the same website but there are 4 ways a user can type the URL into the browser bar.
Add a ‘canonical’ tag in the header section of each page to indicate to the search engines which one to
use. If this is omitted, Google will see it as 4 separate pages and treat them as duplicates.
Google wants all pages to use HTTPS with www.
You can utilize a 301 redirect to accomplish this task.
NOTE: The 301 redirect can be accomplished in different ways depending on your web server. (Apache,
NGINX, IIS etc) Consult your documentation.
8) ROBOTS
It's not technically required, but it's good practice to have a Robots.txt file in the root folder of
your website. This file will tell search engines what they can and cannot list. You might want to
exclude certain pages or entire folders. If robots.txt is missing, the search engine may list every page
on your site such as error pages, response pages, shopping carts, pages still in progress etc...
9) SITEMAP
Again, it's not technically required, but a website without a sitemap may get pushed down by Google. The
site map helps search engines see all your pages for inclusion in search listings. Be sure to create a
Sitemap.xml file for your website. The sitemap is a guideline for Google as to what should be included
for a website. Anything you can do to be found online is a plus.
10) OPEN GRAPH TAGS
A person who views your website may decide to share a link to it on Facebook or other social media
platform. That's awesome! The website designer can control what title, description, image, object type,
locale (language) etc. will appear by using Open Graph Tags. If these are omitted from the webpage,
Facebook will likely use whatever image and title it discovers first. This may not be what you want. One
of the cool feature of Open Graph Tags is that the format is universally recognized by most social media
websites. Be sure to use the Open Graph Tags and make your site appear the way you want on social
media.
11) TWITTER CARD
You may want to consider adding tags for Twitter (X). The purpose is to make your site display properly
on Twitter. This is quite similar to the Open Graph Tags mentioned above.
12) BROKEN LINKS & REDIRECTS
Most websites eventually change and some change constantly. Make sure your website doesn't have any
broken links. Pages may get removed or replaced with more relevant information. However, the listing for
the missing page may still be listed on Google. If a person clicks the link, they won't see anything.
You will want to employ a proper 404 page or a 301 redirect to send these page requests to another
relevant page on your site. If there isn’t a relevant page, you should redirect to the home page. The
key takeaway here is that EVERY link on Google should go to an active page or the opportunity is
lost.
13) GOOGLE VERIFICATION
Verify your site with Google. An unverified site will be pushed down in the search results. You can
accomplish this by logging into your Google business account. This also has the benefit of being able to
view statistics on your website such as total click, impressions, and average listing position.
14) BACKLINKS, BACKLINKS, BACKLINKS
Backlinks are links on other websites that point to a page your website. You WANT as many of these
as possible. It's a key factor in moving your website higher in the rankings. This is perhaps, the
toughest part of SEO. Some possible ways of adding backlinks are blog posts, social media posts like
Facebook/Instagram/Twitter and links from other websites such as a product vendor/dealer
relationships. Online directories such as Yellow Pages and Yelp will likely create links your page
automatically. Use your business contacts to ask them to link to your site and you can create a
reciprocal link. In this way, you are helping to cross promote each other's business.
NOTE: DO NOT PAY COMPANIES FOR BACKLINKS. Google views this is cheating. It may work at first, but
Google has been penalizing websites for this practice.
15) MISSING PAGES
Sooner or later, you will remove old / stale pages from your website, but they still appear in search
engines. You don't want a user going to a dead link as you will lose that traffic. Link redirection is
handled by including an .htaccess file. This is useful for redirecting backlinks that point to any old
pages that no longer exist, so they go to a new page that does exist.
16) PRACTICE SPEED LOADING!
Page loading speed is important! Make sure your site comes up quickly. Pictures are great but avoid
using too many as it will slow down your load speed. Avoid GIANT size pictures unless there is a actual
need. Remember that not everyone has gigabit internet. Change your template if necessary. You want your
site to be very quick and responsive.
17) IMPROVE YOUR GRAMMAR
Use ChatGPT or Grammarly to rephrase paragraphs on your website to make them easier to read or more
upbeat. If your website is for the public, you might aim for a high school reading level. Too many big
words or terminology will often confuse the reader, and they will go elsewhere. Keep it simple for the
masses.
18) ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Google has made some changes with the advent of AI; each listing page now shows an AI summary above all
paid and organic listings. This is great for users but makes it even more challenging for a website
owner. Use AI to compete with AI. Some websites are now using AI to improve search rankings. One
of the things you can do is use AI to analyze your content and rewrite it to be more compelling.
19) PHYSICAL LOCATION
Google will take into consideration the proximity of your business location relative to the town center
OR the business that’s closer to the person who is making the Google search. You could move your
business closer to the town center but that’s not feasible for most of us. Even if you did move, you may
be moving away from other customers.
20) ADD CONTENT
Each page you add to your website is another opportunity to get another page listed on Google. It's more
opportunity for keywords. It's more opportunity to engage your customers.
21) DON'T FORGET SOCIAL MEDIA
Establish a presence on social media for more exposure. If possible, embed your feed into your site.
Post to your social media regularly. Link to content on your website and vice versa. The goal here is to
keep the viewer engaged as long as possible. Facebook, & Twitter (X) are popular choices.
22) TEST YOUR SITE WITH ALL SCREEN SIZES
Quite often, a person is driving around and will check Google on their phone for a particular store or
service that's nearby. You want your website to be viewable on these smaller screens. Always test to see
what it looks like on phones, tablets, notebooks, desktops and wide monitors. Your site should
dynamically adapt to any size screen. Failure to do so means the viewer won't be able to see all of your
great content that you spent time developing.
23) STAY CURRENT
The current standard is HTML5/CSS. You don't want an older HTML code generator or editor. It may be
utilizing HTML4 which has be deprecated for about a decade. Many of the attributes and elements are no
longer valid. Likewise, Frontpage plugins are also obsolete. Yes, there are still people out there
trying to use FrontPage and Expression Web. Please use HTML5/CSS for compatibility.
HOW MEYER COMPUTER CAN HELP
If you have a website with Meyer Computer, we can handle all of this for you.
If you do NOT have a website with Meyer Computer, we can check your website to determine how your
ranking and what can be done to improve your technical SEO. We can help you choose keywords that would
be more effective with Google. We cannot make changes for you unless you provide access and allow us to
make said changes.
SUMMARY
There are a LOT of things to take into consideration with SEO. Be creative and think of what your
competition hasn’t yet. There is NO single formula for SEO as every site and every market is unique. If
you can find your niche, your website will begin to rank higher as you do more of these things. Keep at
it and good luck!
