I came across this article on Social Media Today and it made me realize why so much confusion exists about search engine opimization for those who do not work in the field. It is because there are many different activities that can be performed that are all considered search engine optimization techniques.   The article goes on to mention the different aspects and how to choose the best one for your project.

The first SEO tasks discussed by Amanda DiSilvestro, the post author, is:

What’s the best way for you to boost your SEO?  So many different options and results exist. On-Page search engine optimization is where eVS always starts a project. Here is what we do:

1. Perform Keyword Research: Determine the best keyword phrases to target each website page for based on the amount of traffic the keyword phrases is shown to generate and SEO strength of the online competition.
2. Install Google Analytics: What good is improving the website if one is not tracking the success and/or areas for improvement?
3. Rewrite Content: Provide content edit suggestions to the client for review and approval. This entails making sure that the content is written to target the chosen keyword phrase for the page, has at least 250 words of content, at least one relevant hyperlink within the first 700 characters.
4. Rewrite or Add Page Titles and Meta Descriptions: The page title is the clickable link that shows up in the search engines and the meta description is the short paragraph that displays below. Both of these should explain exactly what the page will deliver, include keyword phrases and entice the viewer to click to your page.
5. Verify with Google & Bing: Submitting websites to the top search engines allows for any visibility or coding issues to be discovered sooner, rather than later. I also is a signal to them to begin crawling the site and include it in their search index.
6. Create XML Sitemap: The sitemap.xml file is a list of your pages, their priority or importance on your site and how often they change. By uploading this file to your server and submitting it to the search engines, the spiders have a starting point for crawling the website.
7. Claim/Optimize Local Profiles: Google, Bing and Yahoo all provide localized search functionality. A lot of websites end up being indexed for local searches as they are crawled by the search engine spiders. We claim your ownership of these listings, put the website in the right categories and add optimized business information and images. Google even provides the oportunity to create a free ad that shows up on mobile search.
8. Claim/Optimize High Quality Directory Sites: Next, we claim your ownership and optimize listings on such sites as yp.com (Yellow Pages) and Nokia.com (for mobile search). These listings provide valuable link-backs and are a great free way to improve your Internet presence.
9. Claim/Optimize Public Review Sites: If appropriate for the business in question, all the free listings on sites such as Yelp.com, MerchantCircle.com and Foursquare.com are claimed and optimized. These sites allow anyone to add business and reviews to them. Again – more free Internet real estate.

Here’s a snapshot of a recent project, (Click the image to see a full view):

Click image to view full report

NOTE: The one error that remains is a page that has sparse text. This page does not warrant adding any more text because it is a landing page.

How is your on-page search engine optimization on your website? Want to find out? Click the button here: