A lot of people think that SEO is one massive push to Normandy and a take no prisoners attitude. While mass marketing can certainly take you places, I have found that it’s the little things that make the biggest differences. Truth is, many people don’t even bother to pay attention to those little things. While I can’t possibly go over all of them in the space of one article, I’m going to point out a few simple examples where those little things can make all the difference in the world.

Why don’t we start with the header of your page, whatever kind of page it is. I know that a lot of you folks love the fancy graphical headers with all the bells and whistles, but did you know that a simple text header with a nice H1 tag will actually help your site rank much better. The search engines really don’t do a great job or ranking pages based on graphics…at least that has been my experience. So while the flashy might look better, that H1 title right up there at the top will really work wonders with placement.

What about your links? Lots of people are just too plain lazy to create anchor text. That’s where the link you click on has some kind of description instead of just a URL. I mean why bother doing all that extra work just for a link, right? Well, that extra work, especially if you target just the right keywords for that link, might very well mean the difference between a page that gets ranked high in the SERPs or not at all. Besides that, don’t you think your visitors would appreciate a more user friendly experience? After all, ultimately, THAT is what the search engines are looking for. Don’t ever forget that. It’s about the USER…not your ego or lack thereof.

How about photos? So many people just slap them up there without any alt tags. I mean, why bother, right? People can see the photos so why do they need an alt tag? Well, actually, they might. For one thing, what if the photo doesn’t load? In that case, the visitor is left staring at…nothing. For another, remember what I said about graphical headers? Well, the same thing is true with photos. They just don’t rank well without the alt tags. And a great alt tag will REALLY get your photo ranked well, especially with Google Images, which, in my experience, can bring you MORE traffic than the regular search engine listings. Yes…photos kill.

Point is, these, and so many other little things, when added together, turn your so-so web page into one that can destroy the competition simply because most people don’t put the effort into the little details. They’re too busy trying to get backlinks and doing all other kinds of shenanigans to try to pump their site up the ranks.

Maybe if they paid more attention to the LITTLE things, they wouldn’t have to work so hard.

It’s just a thought.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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