Now there is no such thing as the “golden bullet” in SEO. However you can begin working towards that end goal of “being number one on Google” today, if you haven’t already. Here are my 7 simple steps, that you can do today, to increase the search ranking of every blog post, product page and information page on your website.

Increase Search Rankings With Simple SEO

Re-write Your Content

Every now and then I stumble across a website which has existed for donkies-years. Usually this can be seen through either the design, the content or the fact it says “copyright 1998″ in the footer. Either way a little snooping shows content that has also existed for years. Search engines love fresh content, even if it’s on old pages. Old pages mean they can be reliable, but this needs to be twinned with great content and the following steps. Learning to get content right is the first step to increasing your search rankings today.

Create an Effective Title Tag

Title tags are the “blue links” you see on a search results page, they also appear in the browser header serving as a reminder to users about what they are reading in another tab maybe and they are also very powerful. Creating the perfect Title tag is more of an art for than a science. As with the Meta Description tag mentioned below, this is your 30 second elevator pitch, get this right and you will see huge click through rates – get it wrong and well people will ignore you. Use the title tag to sell your wears, for example to grab attention this blog uses the pull of “7 easy ways” sayings something is easy or simple attracts the attention and mind over something that doesn’t say that – after all everyone wants it easy.

Creating an Awesome Meta Description

Meta Descriptions are usually single sentences of around 140 characters. Think of them as a tweet, they like title tags above are an elevator pitch. You need to describe your content accurately but not give away too much of what the page is about. These should be unique to every page like titles, and should include your keywords or phrases for that page. Spending a few hours updating these once a month can help increase your click through rates dramatically.

Writing the Ultimate URL

SEO improves dramatically on a website when URL’s change from being a mix of letters or numbers or dynamic to being clean and friendly. For example wordpress by default is ?p=234 but as an SEO friendly url would be /category/post-url … this is something you will likely need the help of a developer for as it requires some techy knowledge from time to time.

Optimising Images for SEO

Images are fairly easy to optimise. Give your images clean friendly and keyword rich file names. Then in your code (or within your cms) add some alt text, this alt text combined with file name is the SEO bit of the image… they are essential to show the relevance of them to your page.

Remember Keep It Stupidly Simple!

One of my little motto’s is keep it simple, it means clean up everything and put the consumer first. This means putting everything external that can be, so styling and javascript for instance. It also means putting search engines after consumers. This is because a search engine is a consumer, you feed consumers and they will feed search engines, get it right for one and the other too may be happy. So in your content don’t use jargon, don’t change your tone or nature of your voice, don’t talk like you would to a 2 year old. Talk like an adult as if it was one to one with a person and your content is explaining something for the first time.

If this post has got you eager for more hot tips for increasing your search rankings you may be interested in the following posts:

10 Simple Ways to Increase Your E-Commerce Revenue

Dumming Down Content to Caveman Levels

10 Simple Rules for Web Designers Doing SEO

and SEO Andy’s High Priority Marketing Tips for 2012

ps. yes my meta description lies but given this post doesn’t sell anything I don’t care, it got your attention didn’t it! See elevator pitch it and sell sell sell.