I learned SEO years ago as an intern, 'hell week' style. It was hard. Force-feeding is not the way I suggest learning how to optimize for search engines. However, the things I learned in relation to page titles, Meta descriptions, keywords, and images may be of use to you in your site's SEO.

SEO Title:

An SEO Title or page title is the title that shows on the top bar of your browser when you are on a page. It is also the title that shows when you do a Google search. Make sure to use unique SEO titles for every article. EX: if you have an article that is named the same thing every week, try adding a colon and the subtitle following it (2 cents of the week: our take on global warming). The SEO title also contains key terms for searches. Do not skip this step.

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Meta Description:

Have you ever wondered what the heck a Meta description is? When you do a Google search, the information that displays below a page title is the Meta description. Note: users read these. Make sure that they explain what your page is about and include keywords that people may search for. A Meta description should be unique to each individual page. Think snowflakes, not vanilla. This makes your pages more likely to be clicked once they come up in a search.

Keywords:

The importance of keywords is often debated by SEOs today. Some say that they are as archaic as the tape deck, while others still push for them. Look at it this way: like content, they are just one more location for crawlers to see important terms linked to your site.

• Are your keywords unique?
• Are they content specific?
• Only use 3-5 keywords or phrases

Images:

Are you using alt tags / descriptions with your images? Alt tags should be added to all images. A) Crawlers use them for search. B) When someone turns off images in their browser, the alt tag information shows instead of the image. C) Text-reading programs used by the visually impaired read alternative text and can provide important clues to content that depends on images for context.

SEO is important to every site. It's a different type of writing, but the goal is still to make your story be interesting, detailed, and completely relevant to the topic. Like good writing style, good SEO pays off. Make sure to use page titles, Meta descriptions, keywords, and images to ensure you get the best possible search engine rankings.