Crown Jewels of Search Engine Findability
I had a a gentleman that contacted me about his website. He was building one for China but it was not being found. He had followed guidelines that said to name yur graphics what you want to be found for…the problem is that might work for english (ascii) characters but it will not work for a foreign languages.
Here is what I recommended to him. First, the title of the website. Put the name of your company but also put your keywords there. The title is the single most important field for your findability. People often put worth terms like home there. It is a complete waste! Put key words in the title even if it is longer than 77 characters. Those words may not display, but Google will still prioritize them!
Next put your key words in the “alt” tags of graphics. This is often an unused area in the graphic information. Also called the alternative text it is important to put your words there. There is no limit here so put all you want.
Third, make sure your description and key words meta tags have values. Google does not give this are as much importance but never waste a place to put your information.
Fourth, make sure the keywords you use in the title tag, and alt tags can be found on the page as well. Key words not listed anywhere else is killing the ranking of them. If you have kitchen sink in the title tag, make sure it is on the page content somewhere as well.
Finally, get as many inbound links to your website as possible. Quality inbound links improve your credibility. Put links in Yelp, facebook, linkedin, and where else you can think. It all adds up.
Language does not matter as these general rules work and they work because Google came up with these rules!
The gentleman I gave all this advise followed it and it worked! He went from not being able to be found in 20 pages of Google to being found in the first and third spots of the natural listings for the key terms he wanted.
While these results may not be the same for you, the results will still improve greatly your SEO!