Top 10 SEO Tips

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1. Keyword Research

Definitely number one on the list; your entire search engine optimisation programme will revolve around your chosen Keywords.

Which search terms do you want your website to be found for? Sometimes this will be obvious, for example a firm of solicitors in Brighton will want to be found for "brighton solicitors" or "solicitors in brighton". Sometimes more research will be required.

How to define your keywords

• Seek the opinion of your customers, employees, family and friends: what would they search for?
• Run some example searches yourself: if your competitors dominate the results pages this is an indicator that you've hit on the right terms
• Use an online keyword research tool. Research services are offered by sites such as Wordtracker or Keyword Universe, but use with care: their data is often US-centric and does not include local search data
• Choose one or two phrases only and concentrate your efforts on those. Choosing too many phrases means you spread your efforts thinly and end up with many poorly optimised phrases, rather than a small number of well optimised phrases.

2. Website Copy

Now you know what keywords you are targeting you need to write Website Copy that focuses on them.

Keyword density is the measure of how many times a keyword is repeated compared to the overall content of a web page. If a keyword appeared five times out of a word count of 100 the keyword density would be 5%.

An appropriate keyword density is around 3 - 5%. Anything more could be seen as spamming and search engines could penalise your site.

Consider highlighting your keywords using bold or italics. This helps search engines understand that these words are important.