SEO Tutorial 3: Building your site with SEO in mind

1. Creating search engine friendly website content

The bulk of what a search engine can see in a website is its written content (as opposed to images etc.). If you want the search engines to like your site, and send you visitors, your site has to have a good deal of written content.

Keeping pages topic focused

When you start to develop a page for your website consider the page's main focus and take a look at your list of keywords. What keyword(s) best describes what's on that page.

There are some areas of a web page that are important and will "call out" to the search engines what the main topic of the page is. A good plan when creating a page is to keep it topic focused by integrating your keywords into different places such as the:

• Title tag
• Description tag
• Keywords tag
• Headers
• Special formatting such as bolding or italicizing
• Throughout the written content
• In text links

2. Writing Title, Description and Keywords Tags

Each of these meta tags; title, description and keywords tags can be added by clicking on the Properties Tab in the Content Sidebar. (Image below)

The area labeled Window Title is where you will put your title tag. Your title tag should include the main keyword or concept of your page, your business or website name and your location if this would be important to your visitors; it should also be under 70 characters long. Here is a basic example:

Fine Gold Jewelry | ABC Jewel Company | My Town, Texas

The area labeled Description is where you will put your description tag. Your description tag should include the main keywords for the page and the name of your company and the location, if this would be important to your visitors. It should be under 200 characters long and should entice Internet users to click. Here is a basic example:

ABC Jewel Company provides customers in and around My Town, Texas with the finest yellow and white gold jewelry imported directly from Italy. Stop in today!

The area labeled Keywords is where you will put in the main keywords for the page. Don't stuff keywords, only list keywords that apply to the content of the page. Here is a basic example:

fine gold jewelry, gold jewelry, white gold jewelry, ABC Jewel Company, My Town Texas, TX

3. Incorporating keywords into content

When you write page content, the keywords should blend in naturally - don't overdo the usage of keywords, or the search engines will ignore the pages. Internet content should be easy for the reader to scan or read through. You can create this effect with:

• Short paragraphs
• Logical page breaks utilizing headings and subheadings
• Bullet pointed and numbered lists
• Bolding or italicizing (more useful for search engine optimization than optimum readership, don't overdo)
• Creating keyword rich text links

Here is a short example using ABC Jewel Company's webpage about fine gold jewelry. Note where the keyword "fine gold jewelry" is used.

Experience Fine Gold Jewelry

Gold jewelry never goes out of style, and for good reason. Fine gold jewelry has adorned the bodies of royalty to everyday people for centuries. Buying gold jewelry can be a rich experience. Are you looking for the kind that you don't find at the local jewelry store? ABC Jewel Company specializes in the kind of premium gold that marks a special occasion for life.

What to keep in mind when purchasing fine gold jewelry:

• What type of wear and tear will the jewelry be facing?
• Does the wearer have a preference between white and yellow gold?
• What is your price range?

Learn more about the various specifics of fine gold jewelry here on our site. We're passionate about gold and want to share that passion with you.

4. Giving images alternative text

Search engines cannot "see" graphics, they read text. You can help the search engines "see" the topic of your graphics by giving them something called an "alternate attribute" or "alternate text".

To give your image alternate text in Yola you can:

1. Click on the image
2. Click on the Properties Tab in the Content Sidebar
3. Scroll down to the "Alternative Text" field
4. Enter text to describe your image including your keyword possibly
5. Click Apply

5. Creating search engine friendly text links (hyperlinks)

Search engines follow text links through a site and they also note what text is used. Putting your keyword into a text link further enhances the keywords relevance on your page. To create a keyword rich text link in Yola:

1. Highlight the words you want to be the link
2. Click on the insert link icon in the Edit Toolbar
3. Choose where you will be linking to
4. Click OK