You might have noticed that, throughout our series of articles, there is a lot of advice about what you should usually do, or what makes sense in most cases. That’s because search engine optimization means different things to different people; because all marketers have individual goals, there aren’t many hard and fast rules about what’s going to work most efficiently or effectively.
Once in a while, however, there are some ironclad laws to stick by if you want to reach one of the prime spots on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Here are two you should definitely pay attention to:
Optimize your page titles. These can be easy to miss, because they aren’t always included in the copy for your webpage. But your page titles – the little text descriptions that show up at the top of most browsers and in search engine results – tell spiders what your page is about. That means, if you want your page to come up under “best priced widgets,” it should say so in the page title.
Besides, as we mentioned, page titles frequently show up on search engine results. So, it’s a good idea to have your best keywords written there so searchers know to click on your site.
Write headings with keywords and phrases. We could probably write hundreds of articles about the headings you put at the top of your pages and still barely scratch the surface. That’s because, other than enticing readers to stay on the page and become engaged with your content, headings are very important to search engine spiders. Like page titles, they give the good people at Google and their competitors an idea of your page’s topic and focus.
That doesn’t just count for the headings you put at the top of your page, either. Even minor subheadings give spiders clues about a site’s content, so make sure you have your best keywords and phrases included there, too.
There are an a lot of rules of thumb when it comes to search engine marketing, but optimizing your page titles and headings is something you should do on every page you put up.
