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This is the first in a series of posts I will be doing here at Search Engine Journal that will help small business website owners better understand what SEO tasks they can safely tackle on their own and which are best left to the pros. Many in the SEO industry will try to tell you that there aren’t any optimization efforts that should be undertaken by a do-it-yourselfer, but that’s not entirely true.

In today’s economic climate most small business owners are looking to save every penny possible and many simply don’t have it within their budgets to higher one of the search marketing industry’s SEO heavy hitters. That doesn’t mean all is lost or that their sites should be left completely unoptimized. Not only that, any task that a small business owner can do themselves is one fewer task that they may pay an SEO firm $50 or more an hour to do for them.

There are a number of tasks that should rarely, if ever, be done by the site owner – there’s no doubt about that. Involved and technical tasks, like changing URL structures or making changes to an .htaccess file should almost NEVER be done by someone who doesn’t understand the far-reaching ramifications of those changes. However, there are some basic tasks that, with a bit of understanding and instruction, a site owner can safely undertake on his or her own with little danger of making a catastrophic mistake.

Disclaimer: Don’t Skip The Keyword Research

Before we get into the specific aspects of SEO that you can tackle yourself, I need to stress the importance of starting off in the right direction. Keyword research is an absolute cornerstone of any potentially successful SEO strategy. Without it you could be targeting terms that you believe potential customers use in a keyword search, but that in reality generate little or no search volume. Believe me, it happens – and it happens more often than not.

I highly recommend having a professional do keyword research for you, but if that isn’t possible - before you even consider attempting any optimization of a site on your own, Learn the Basics of Keyword Research.

Okay, Let’s Talk Titles

The page title is essential – one of the single most important aspects of helping to communicate the target terms of the page to the search engine crawlers, as well as to search users. The page title is what is shown as the link to your site in the search results, after all – so don’t underestimate its potential effect on click through rates. There is no greater missed opportunity than having a website riddled with generic page titles like “Home”, “About Us” or “Contact Us”. Just as each page of a site should have unique content that includes the keywords you’re hoping to rank well for, each page title should be unique and reflect the content of the page.

So, what should be included in a page title? One thing is for sure: it should include the target keywords or keyword phrases of the page. The terms identified throughout the keyword research process will provide you with a direction here. Terms that have the greatest level of competition and search volume should be assigned to high level pages, while terms with lower search volume – referred to as long-tail keywords – should be targeted with pages deeper in the site. Be careful in choosing the terms to include in the title, as those terms tell the search engines a great deal about the content on the page – or, to be more accurate, the title SHOULD forecast the content on the page.

It is best to choose 2-4 specific and related search terms for each page title. By related I mean don’t try to target the terms “purses” and “shoes” with the same page, as from a search engine’s perspective those terms don’t have a natural correlation. The terms “handbags” and “purses” on the other hand are more closely related. In limiting the number of terms you’re trying to target with a single page you make it easier to create robust and keyword rich content for the page, as well as increasing the opportunity to build a stronger internal link structure throughout the site – two topics that will be covered in future posts in the SEO 101 series.

Another guideline to keep in mind is the title’s length. Search engines typically limit the number of characters used as the link within the results to between 55 and 70, depending on the engine – and those character limits do include spaces. That said, do your best to keep page titles under 70 characters and be sure that the most important, highest search volume and attention grabbing keywords come as early on in the title as possible to make sure they’re not truncated in the search results.

It serves no purpose to have a high volume search term appear 80 characters into a 120 character title, as that information will never appear within the results for search users to see. And, quite frankly, titles of excessive length are far more likely to be considered “spammy” search engines and result in a page ranking lower than it would with a shorter, properly optimized title. Nothing is more likely to be overlooked or purposely skipped over by a search user than a keyword spammed title that doesn’t really tell a search user anything about the site.

Compare these two titles:

1. Leather Purses and Handbags at Wholesale Prices from Alma’s in Akron
2. Wholesale Leather Purses, Leather Purses, Wholesale Purses

It’s pretty obvious which result is more appealing to the eye, as well as more informative. Seeing the second result in a keyword search for “leather purses” not only lets the search user know that the site being linked to has what they’re looking for – leather purses – but also wholesale pricing, the business name and location. With less than 70 characters this page has begun to build a small amount of rapport with a potential visitor.

As you can see, a lot of thought, planning and effort must be given to creating the titles of each and every page of your website. When you couple this task with the keyword research process, you could be looking at hours of work just to get this one small aspect of SEO squared away – especially if your site is made up of hundreds of pages targeting hundreds of keywords.

That said, you must ask yourself one question: “what do I have more of at the moment – time or money?” If the answer is time, you’re may be better of attempting to begin the process of optimizing your titles yourself. If the answer is money, you’re likely better off hiring a seasoned SEO professional, not only to optimize your site’s titles, but to carry out a complete strategy that will cover the many aspects of on-site SEO.

If you decide to try your hand at doing it yourself, bear this in mind when creating page titles:

• Keep them short (70 characters max)
• Make sure they include target search terms of the page
• Don’t try to target more than 2-4 terms with a single page
• Most competitive and highest search volume terms should appear first - the terms engines encounter first tend to carry more weight
• Make titles both user AND search engine friendly (would YOU click on it if you saw it in the search results? If not, why should anyone else??)

In future SEO 101 posts I will be covering topics including maximizing the impact of your META description tag and using META robots arguments properly, creating search engine friendly and user friendly text content, building a strong internal link structure, getting the most out of headings and more.

Alysson Fergison, known as SEOAly by many, is an independent SEO expert specializing in SEO Consulting, Audits and Keyword Research Services for Small Business.