The 10 Most Important Things in SEO

Of the myriad of factors involved in having effective SEO for your site, the following are the 10 most critical:

1. Keyword Research – This means brainstorming the search terms your customers are most likely to use to find your site and its products, services, and information.

2. Analytics – Once you’ve selected the keywords you will use, you begin the ongoing process of tracking the results of those keywords, analyzing how well (or poorly) they’ve helped you achieve your traffic goals, and making the appropriate adjustments to your keyword campaigns.

3. Site Accessibility – That means no broken links, using valid coding (HTML, CSS, etc.), making sure all your including forms and applications work properly, and minimizing file size, server speed, and downtime.

4. Site Usability – This entails the user-friendly factors of smart design and intuitive navigation.

5. Cornerstone Content – Your site should include some amount of related content that will always be relevant, so you can become a valuable a trusted source of information for your visitors.

6. Dynamic Content – Your site must also have new, fresh, and original content added on a regular basis in order to keep you relevant in the ever-roving public eye.

7. Outreach – This involves the ‘I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine” principle of link building and link exchanges as well as the web 2.0 concept of interactive site features (polls, surveys) and user-contributed content (forums, discussion groups).

8. Information Architecture – In other words, make sure your site includes a thorough, clean, clear, and well-designed site map.

9. Meta Tags, URLs, and Title Tags – While not as mission-critical as some SEO “experts” purport, having accurate and finely-honed meta data and URLs is a fundamental part of starting off your SEO efforts on the right foot.

10. SEO Company – Everything just listed is a lot to remember, admittedly. So when in doubt, or if you feel overwhelmed by it all, just remember that you can always turn to an SEO company to help you get it right.