How to promote yourself or company
I started this page before on the "Art of SEO". I was concerned that I was giving my secrets away.
As it turns out it is not difficult, but like most things you need to know what you are doing!
However, as I have found, once you have worked out how to get a listing appearing at the top of search engine result list you have to be careful that you don't appear to be making an attack on the subject of the page. Often when a page is found by someone you have been critical if is automatically assumed that you are "out to get them", destroy their reputation or business. It also could be thought that the only reason for your website and the posting is for that purpose only.
The use of Google Search Console and Analytics
This is key here.
Using the reports you can see what pages are getting Impressions and hopefully Clicks (visits). Inspection of these pages as a priority to see why the page was not Clicked is important as you will get an idea of what changes you can make to entice the person making a search to Click on your result.
Not only the TITLE tag is important for SEO but the first few lines on the page will often appear in the search result. This text is something that may influence the person initiating the Impression to make the Click. Google and the other popular search engines seem to use this text in preference to the "description" META tag. In fact I seem to have missed this tag completely from my latest design. I will have to add it back to the template and fill in for key pages.
The page file name, in my estimation, is of secondary importance for SEO as it often suppressed on many browser displays. The iPad and iPhone are cases in point here. The file name is only really of importance if you have either pissed someone off that they have set a bookmark or copied your URL so that they can check on what you have currently posted on that page. The file name will still appear in the URL accessed when a 404 error is displayed when the page has been physically deleted from the server.
The deleted URL will also continue to show up in your Analytics reports if accessed directly or from a Bookmark.