This guest posst is by Kole McRae of Office Buddha.
I'm a blogger now but in a former life I did SEO professionally. As a part of the industry I've seen first hand the insane amount of misleading information available. Even so-called “professionals” have been known to give out absolutely terrible advice.
That's why I'm writing this article. I want to finally teach you bloggers the truth behind SEO and how to rank well in Google. Some of the following information might be obvious and some of it might seem strange, but stick with me. If you follow my advice you'll be ranking number one in no time.
The information I'm going to give is specific to Google, but the same tips will also help you rank in Bing and all other search engines.
Meta tags
Meta tags are a part of the HTML of your page that appear in the header. There are hundreds to choose from but only two matter when it comes to HTML: the Title tag and the Description tag.
Some people talk about the Keywords meta tag but Google has made it clear that they completely ignore it. It doesn't hurt to have a keywords tag, but don't assume it will help you rank in Google.
The Description tag
This is what Google (sometimes) uses to describe your site in the search results. It’s shown in the screenshot below.
This does not effect your rankings, but it can be used to help entice people to click on your link in the search results. Make sure it is relevant to your site, and describes what people will find when they click your link.
As you can see in the screenshot, the term that was searched for will show up in bold in the results. You can use this to help get more clicks—but don't abuse it.
The Title tag
The Title tag is (sometimes) used by Google as the main text of your link within the search results, as seen in the screenshot below:
The words used here have been proven to help...
