What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, a way increase the visibility of a website in search engines through organic or unpaid search results (as opposed to Google Ads or other paid methods).

Google has created a wonderful guide to make your website more search-engine friendly. Here are a few tips they provide on improving your website.

Create unique, accurate page titles. The page title is located at the very top of the page and is listed on the first line of search results. You want to accurately describe the page's content, create unique title tags for each page and use brief, but descriptive title. Avoid vague titles, or worse, the dreaded "Untitled" page heading.

Make use of the "description" meta tag. A page's description meta tag provides a summary of what the page is about and should be a sentence or two or a short paragraph. Use unique descriptions for each page. Avoid writing a meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page or using only keywords.

Improve the structure of your URLs. Use descriptive web addresses instead of long, cryptic URLs that contain no or irrelevant words. For example, http://mybusiness.com/resources is better than http://mybusiness.com/folder/18937599742/x1/0000032a.htm.

Offer quality content and services. The easiest and best way to provide fresh content is through blog posts, social media services and forums. Write easy-to-read text, use relevant language and create content for your visitors, not search engines. Avoid inserting numerous unnecessary keywords, having blocks of text that add little value to users and deceptively hiding text from users, but displaying it to search engines.

Google also warns of using "black hat" SEO tactics, like those listed above as things to avoid. Using such tactics could get you banned from Google, and would not be a good thing.

Here is a link to the Goggle SEO Starter Guide. Incorporating even a few of these ideas into your website should help you move up in the search engine rankings.