Basics of SEO
Ok. You have your website and now what? You have to reach users. One of the best way to make traffic is to be high in the search engines.
We start today with the basic of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
1. Title, Meta description & Meta keywords
It is the first thing to do. I think you have it already done, but if not, you have to put it into your <head> the following 3 tags.
2. Redirect your domain to with www or without www
For search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu the addresses http://www.google.com and http://google.com are 2 different domains. If you don't have a redirect to one option, search engines will see your page as duplicated - and Google don't like duplicate content. If you try to reach the link http://google.com you will see a 301 redirect to a with www address.
To create a 301 redirect from an address without www to an adrress with www you have to create a .htaccess file in the root folder of your website and add 3 simple lines.
With www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^
RewriteRule ^(.*)$
Without www
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^
RewriteRule (.*)
3. H1-H6 Tags
Tags are in my opinion an important factor, serving as a description of the pages content. Include keywords into all website tags on your page.
Just 1 H1 element, 2-3 H2 element, 2-5 H3 element and if you have a lot of content you can add h4 - h6 elements. If you don't have a lot of content and still want to add max h tags as possible you can make the tag css style h4, h5, h6 {display:inline;}.
4. Text decoration
Have fun with your content. Bold, underline, change colour of keywords on your website. It's always good to have some sentences including keywords decorated.
5. Density of keywords
Try to avoid to many repeats but it's essential to include as much keywords on your website as possible :). I give it in ~2-3% for the most important keyword and ~1-2% for other keywords.
6. Text/HTML ratio
Robots index searching for content. If your website will have a lot of scripts, trash code in the source it will be difficult to reach the content. You have to always try to reach over 70% of text to html ratio. If you have beetwen 50-60% it's ok, but you should add some content to your website. If you have under 40% you have to add right now content to your website.