There is nothing more disappointing than spending time on a site only to have it become an internet ghost town. No visitors. No conversations. Not even on the map. Sad.

I know because it happened to me. Over 5 years ago I thought I was going to have more web orders than I could fill from my shiny new website (making hemp jewelry) only to get a grand total of ONE sale in the course of a year. Needless to say I didn’t quit my day job.

But what I gained from that experience was a burning NEED to understand why. Why was my site abandoned to the vast archives of nothingness when it looked sooooo much better then every other site on the internet? (best looking site on the Internet may not be entirely accurate)

Anyway … what I’m getting to is I’m pretty good at SEO now. And we all have to start somewhere. So here are the top three most important tips I can give you to give your site a good SEO foundation.

These are “on page” factors. Any SEO worth his salt will tell you that off page factors (links from popular sites, social networks, media mentions) are more important. But these on page factors often get neglected. On page SEO factors are important too! They make sure Google gets an accurate index of your site and will make your link in their search result page (SERP) more click-able. So here goes:

Start at the top

Right now look at your browser. In the open tab or across the top you will see the Page title. It will include the name of the article, and possibly the name of the website and/or the category.

Next look at the URL. You see the site name, a slash, a directory or category, and then the name of the article with dashes.

You probably have never given these things a second though, but they are this way by design not accident.

In a content management system one page does not differ much from another except with the actual content.

When Google sees pages that are nearly exactly the same, and have names like ” site.com/posts/?pID=23 ” it gives them less importance than one that looks like this” site.com/new-cars/red-corvette “. This becomes especially important if you have short posts. Google knows what the page is supposed to be about right away when it hits that URL.

UPDATE: I just came across this post: SEO 101: Getting the Right URL Structure. It goes into much more detail on the clean URL subject. Read it! Then come back and finish this -g

The next thing it hits is the Title tag (backwards from what we see first and second). So the url says ” /new-cars/red-corvette ” then your title tag says ” 2012 Red Corvette – New Cars – Site.com “. Google gets confirmation here that this page is definitely about New Red Corvettes.

Now it’s up to you to make sure your actual article talks about Red Corvettes as well. Having an image or two with Alt text that has variations of the key words gives even further confirmation. Along with this an H1 header that is very close or identical with your Title tag is very important. But this post is not about optimizing your actual content. Check out other posts for that. This is “3 Essential SEO Rules for Beginners”. Common sense should help you figure out the content part. I’m here to help with the technical part!

Here I’m going to assume that you are using WordPress since WordPress runs 15 percent of the web’s highest trafficked sites and because its an easy enough example.

In the back end of your wordpress install click on settings. Make sure your title and tagline accurately reflect what your site is about. We’ll use this info in a minute.

Next – still under “settings” – go to “Permalinks”.

Look at the picture. See how I have mine? This is a matter of preference as using anything but Numeric or Default is fine. I just like mine a little cleaner.

Now to get to the actual Title tag. Time to get your hands dirty!

On the left, click “Appearance” then click “Editor”.

Now on the right find ” Header (header.php) ” and click it.

Once you’ve done that, you may be able to see the <title> </title> tags. If you can’t find them easily or if staring at code makes you sea sick, just hit “CNTRL+F” on your keyboard to bring up your browser’s search function. Then type <title>. You should be able to find it now in the editor window.

The simplest solution ( found here: The Simplest, Most Effective SEO Move You Can Make ) is to paste this code between those title tags:


<?php if (is_single() || is_page() || is_archive()) { wp_title('',true); } else { bloginfo('description'); } ?> — <?php bloginfo('name'); } ?>


Personally I use a more complicated method which I will share later (and would probably scare off most beginners any way). It’s just a much longer php statement included in a separate file then inserted between the title tags.

Let’s recap: So far you have taken care of the URL and the Title tag. What is the third essential SEO tip?

Dynamic Description

I posted on it in more detail here: Dynamic wordpress description tags. While still in the editor, right AFTER the closing title tag ( </title> ) paste in this code:

<meta name='description' content='<?php if (have_posts()&& is_single()):while(have_posts()):the_post(); the_excerpt_rss(20,2); endwhile; else: ?>MY DEFAULT DESCRIPTION<?php endif; ?>' />

See where it says “MY DEFAULT DESCRIPTION”? Replace that with a good fitting description that you would like to show up if there isn’t and excerpt available.

Before you do this, you may want to CNTRL+F again and make sure there isn’t already a ” meta name=”description” ” tag already in there. If there is one, you are going to have to use your own judgement on whether to keep it or use the one here. If you have questions, post them in the comments. We’ll get it sorted out. Oh! And remember to hit “update file” at the bottom to save your changes.

Ok boys and girls! You’re done for today! Once more, let’s review:
The 3 Essential SEO Rules for Beginners are…

1. Unique Title Tags
2. Descriptive URL’s
3. Dynamic unique description tags

Remember that these tips transcend WordPress. They are true of any site and most CMS’s will have similar methods to get the
same results. Have fun!