Three Major Lessons from an SEO Amateur
I was a marketing professional who didn’t know SEO. There, I said it. After consulting the popular SEO sites like Copyblogger I thought I had it figured out. So when I began optimizing my first website, I thought I would rock it—after all, shouldn’t SEO be intuitive for a writer? When I saw my 2minuteSEO score of 53 percent (technical score of 5.5) I felt my cursory research like a half-baked egg on my face.
However, my company owns a full year subscription, so I could use the tool to implement changes over time. My first site’s score is now at a whopping 95 percent, with a technical score of 9.8. The result has been increased web traffic, e-mail and phone inquiries for the client—not to mention that they are now at the very top of Google’s rankings for their terms.
While I’m more of a savant now, the process of search engine optimizing my first site was slow, laborious and fraught with lessons, and I felt certain it shouldn’t be (and probably wasn’t) that way for everyone. So I thought back to that very first analysis to share three lessons that have stuck with me.
Give your SEO keywords a little TLC
Of course, I paid extra attention to those five keywords that set me apart from my competitors in my text, but I quickly figured out that a TLC approach was the best way to maximize on these little gems to launch me to the top of the rankings.
TLC stands for
- Titles
- Lists
- Then Content.
By giving my keywords a little TLC I divided and conquered my SEO score on a page-by-page basis without loading my site with keyword spam.
META MATTERS!
Or does it? Admittedly, meta keywords don’t really make a difference to search engines like Google any more, but having them on my page and ensuring they were reflected in the content was an exercise in reviewing my message to make sure it was on-message and revolved around my specific niche.
Optimized content is short and sweet
The tool (and many a reader) gives extra points for keeping pages short and sweet, inside 300 words per page, in order to allow search engine spiders to crawl them easily. Some blogs recommend up to 500 words, but from a journalist’s point of view, keeping the content tight, punchy and informative is the best way to make compelling content. I was able to boil down some of my pages’ 700 words to 300, and what was shaved off were the irrelevant and off-message facts that were diluting my message.
I do admit, my SEO journey was a lot more complex than these three little things—my web developer and I shaved off code, optimized alternative text, trifled over tooltips and pretty much ran the gauntlet to get our page into the top five for our search engine keywords (yes!). But these three little lessons, imparted by a simple (and free) tool, are the ones I’ll keep in my pocket as go-to fixes for any web page (or article) that I write.
Melissa Cessna is a community manager for ReviMedia. She has more than 5 years experience in journalism, public relations and online marketing. She has worked for local publications like the Monterey County Weekly, the Manhattan Mercury, and is currently a blogger and community manager for ReviMedia and Agro2. For more information visit www.revimedia.com or reach Melissa at Melissa@revimedia.com
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19 Responses to “Three Major Lessons from an SEO Amateur”
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Congrats! It’s quite the win to actually see concrete results from your SEO endeavors.
There are also some useful WordPress plugins like All-in-one-SEO that can help newbies as well optimize their sites – good stuff indeed.
m not sure if i agree on that meta keyword thing actually i think it always come up with the debate and end up on one single point that is search engine does not care of Meta keyword anymore…
but over all a good stuff specially the TLC thing that’s nice!
Glad to see your article, very good, very grateful.
Three Major Lessons from an SEO Amateur
http://dailyseotip.com/three-major-lessons-from-an-seo-amateur/1147/
Putting meta keywords in is just giving your targeted keywords to your competition. You gain no benefits for any worthwhile search engine.
I tried the site 2MinuteSEO and felt it was pretty weak. It’s not checking the real reason you rank – links..
Melissa Reply:
December 9th, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Thanks for the comment Robbie. You make a great point, and 2minuteSEO’s newest version will be out later this month with a more in-depth link analysis. If you’d like to send me your e-mail address I’d be happy to get you a month’s free trial once the new version is out!
Best Regards,
Melissa Cessna
SEO is simple yet most complex meticulous and intelligent journalism on internet platform.
I read the complete post and I just came to know that if SEO is done in a well planned and organized way then it will surely be reflecting its results within timeline. However, off site matters and hence master link building plays a vital role in the process. Thats the way I use Scrapebox Video tutorial for others and making it public ally available.
One could visit that tutorial at: http://www.scrapeboxtuts.com
Warmly,
Brian Valentine
Good write up. I just checked out 2minuteSEO and have signed up for their trial. I also agree with you on keeping content short and to the point. Everything else can be viewed as fluff – good post – thanks for the tip.
Oh, thats good idea
three major lessons from an seo amateur http://bit.ly/cCn35b
It really a big help for all of us a the amateurs SEO..thanks for this article..
Relevancy matter a lot in link building process. Specialize in one forte rather than flying around different sectors. For example mine is travel and tourism.
I thought back to that very first analysis to share three lessons that have stuck with me.
The content was an exercise in reviewing my message to make sure it was on-message and revolved around my specific niche.
SEO to allow search engine spiders to crawl them easily.
This is a good start for our site to be more Search Engine friendly. All strategy will help alot.
Hey Melissa,
Great post, although with recent findings of yahoo and bing using meta data again I think people should still pay attention to META data, especially META description tags.
Cheers,
Michael
It is good to hear that you learned quite a lot and you are now the one helping others after learning from your mistake. You can search the web for different solutions to SEO but finding a method that works for you is a different thing. Great post.