You know that you need better SEO for your site in order to drive more traffic to it. But you think that it’s all voodoo and black magic. It’s really not. For the most part SEO efforts are straightforward and do make sense when you think about it from Google’s standpoint: providing access to great content.

So here we will list the top 10 things you can do to improve your site’s Search Engine Ranking:

#1. Unique Content. Sounds simple but it’s not. The more unique your content is, the more likely your site’s content will be displayed when someone searches for it. In this case it really is a matter of being the big fish in a little pond. If you’re another news site, you’ll have to compete against all the other news sites. But if you have a very specific subset of the news market, such as women’s health in southwest Austin, TX, you have a narrow focus. The more unique and specific the better, and you’ll find it easier to stand out.

#2. Keywords. This ties in with your unique content. The best thing you can do for your SEO efforts is to come up with a keyword strategy: Determine what words best describe your product or service that are unlikely to be used by others. If you sell cellphones, “cellphone” is an extremely heavily used keyword. Just search for it on Google. There are almost 20 million hits, so it would prove very difficult to rise to the top with that keyword. It helps to specialize in something. Narrow your market and use keywords that differentiate your product or service from everyone else. Then, post content on your site that use those keywords.

#3. Meta Descriptions and Keywords Tags. This is a difficult one for many people as it requires some knowledge of HTML. In the HTML for your page, a meta description looks like: <meta name="description" content="{your description here}"> and keywords look like <meta name="keywords" content="{your keywords here}">. Google will use the description, if provided, as the page description in it’s Search Engine Results when it lists your page. Keep it short, to the point, and give a compelling reason to come to the page. If you do not provide a description, Google will try to take some of the page’s content, which may appear incomplete or broken. The keywords can help the search engines to better understand your page’s content, but has the disadvantage of letting your competition know some of your keyword strategy. So we advise using some of your less valuable, broader keywords and not your keywords that are specific to your unique branding.

To be continued…. Read Part Two of Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Techniques.