SEO, or search engine optimization, should be an important part of any digital marketing campaign. Here are some basics about SEO and some of the factors about it that can make or break a website.

Being the top result of many different search queries should be the main goal of SEO. You want your site to the top organic search result- meaning that they are results that are not paid for. The most important way to rank well on search engine results is quite simply to provide a good website.

You want to maximize your relevance so that a search engine can accurately look at the topics on your website. There are several things that can be done to help with that but one of the most important factors is where your target keyword phrases are located on your website. In order to maximize relevance, the following “rules” should be followed.

• Make sure that your target keyword phrase is in the URL. When relevance is being calculated, words in the URL are heavily weighted.
• The title tag is another important page location. The target keyword phrase should also appear in the title tag, again because the words in a title tag are heavily weighted.
• A third important page location is the header tag. In the relevance calculation, words inside of the header tag receive more weight.
• In the main content of a page, the target keyword phrases should be used at least once.

So how do you choose the right target search phrases? Its very important to know your target audience. From there, you want to find exact words or phrases that would be used by that audience when they are searching for what you offer. Using these words and phrases and placing them in the right places on your website, will help your website be at the top of a search result and guide your target audience to your site.