Successful search engine optimization is very much like a game of tug-of-war; your team will be much better off if you all pull in the same direction. By the same token if you take the time to consider small details in your website’s structure and ensure that all of the details are working together, you will ultimately benefit. I’m going to cover a few of the key elements to successful SEO and show how synergizing your optimization efforts can work for you.

Key Components of SEO
Let’s begin by breaking down some of the key components to search engine optimization, which include the Title Tag, URL, Header Tag, Content, Internal Links, and External Links.

Title Tag
The bar at the top of your browser is probably the single most important component to search engine optimization. Most sites that you find on the Web will say something like “Company Name – Home” in this area. That’s great—if you’re very well branded and only want to be found for your company’s name.

Instead, try putting your most important keywords in this area, and keep it under control. It’s a good idea to try to keep the total character length to less than 68 characters, including spaces. For the purpose of this blog, let’s make up a page. Let’s say this is a website that sells pet supplies, and we’re going to focus specifically on the fish tank page. So, we have www.yoursite.com/fish-tank/. Your title tag is “Fish Tank | Aquarium Rocks | Fish Tanks.” The total character length is 40. That’s pretty short, but it’s concise, and it’s all the keywords I want to focus on for this page. (Please note that this is merely an example. I didn’t research the proper key words at all and so this may not be the best example. It is for the purpose of illustration and nothing more.)

URL
Google seems to be paying more attention to keywords in the URL, so if you don’t already have rankings, if your site is new, or if you are redesigning your site and will be creating new URLs anyway, consider adding some keywords here. Sticking with our previous example, the best choice is www.yoursite.com/fish-tanks/.

Header Tag
The H1 tag is another key element that must be in synergy with the rest. This appears to most Web visitors as the “title” of the page. This header is usually big, bold and describes exactly what’s on the page. Some sites don’t have a headline or title above the copy at all, but having an H1 tag is another key element to proper SEO. Using our example, the H1 of this page is “Fish Tanks.” Are you beginning to notice a pattern?

Content
One of the most obvious components to good SEO is content, and yet many sites are lacking in it. Write 250 words or so of copy that is relevant to that page. Make sure that you’re using the same words/wording as the Title tag, URL, and H1. It’s probably a good idea to use the words “fish tanks” here as well.

Internal Links
If you are going to link from www.yoursite.com to the “fish tank” page, be sure that you use the words “fish tank” in the anchor text on that link.

External Links
Be really careful not to get all “spammy” here. If you can find relevant websites that would link to product/services pages that are relevant for inclusion, that’s fabulous. But do not, I repeat, do not get too focused on one keyword. Get some links to your internal pages from external sites that have “fish tank” in the anchor text and have these sites link to your /fish-tank/ page. Then, go get some other links for the /aquarium-rocks/ page that have the “aquarium rocks” anchor text.

Details, Details!
The point of this is to show that taking a little extra time to create synergy with your title tag, content, headers and linking is the recipe to successful search engine optimization. Of course, this isn’t everything that you need to know for search engine optimization. There are probably around 250 criteria that a search engine might consider to determine which website to rank for a given search phrase.

As always, if you’re unsure of a major change that you’re about to make, please consult with a SEO professional. Reckless changes to a website can have major effects on rankings and ultimately, your bottom line.