SEO, Search engine optimization, is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site or a web page from search engines via un-paid search results as opposed to other forms of SEM, search engine marketing, which deals with paid search engine inclusion. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. A variety of other methods are employed to get a webpage shown up at the search results. The following are some.
1. You should avoid using Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links. If you MUST use them, you need to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.
2. Content is very important. You need to have good, well-written and unique primary keyword or keyword focused content.
3. While focusing on the content, you should not neglect the links. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, don't link it because the website with lower page ranking will lower the page ranking of your website.
4. If you have pages on your site that are very similar and want to avoid duplicate content issues and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.
5. Title tag on every page of your site should be unique and keyword focused. If you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end.
6. Regularly adding new and useful content will improve your rankings. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.
7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is "search engine tips" then link to "search engine tips" instead of a "Click here" link.
8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text ("computer repair in Toronto" not "computer repair") to help you get found in local searches.
9. Don't design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built will cost you more. You should know that search engine spiders can only crawl text, not Flash or images.
10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even register your domain name with the focus of the keyword or keyphrase.
11. Add viral components to your web site or blog - reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.
12. Use the words "image" or "picture" in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.
13. Don't use Frames at all and use Flash sparingly for best SEO results.
14. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it wonĄŻt make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.
15. Submitting webpage through Google's regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another high ranking site.
16. If your site content doesn't change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.
17. When you do the link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.
18. Search engines want natural language content. Don't try to stuff your text with keywords. It won't work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.
19. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.
20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you're not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.
21. When you register a domain, you should block domain ownership information because Google might see you as a potential spammer.
22. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text so that the search engines may look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video.
23. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems , but if someone copy your content, you'll get backlink out of it.
24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.
25. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.
26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.
27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.
28. Although some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all, you can use e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.
29. You should know that you get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text.
30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.
31. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.
32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don't try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.
33. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.
34. Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.
35. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for "cache:URL" where you substitute "URL" for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn't there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isnĄŻt worth much.
36. Create a sitmap to actually show people where all the other pages are.
37. You should create as many inbound links to your site as possible since they are factored into most search engine's ranking algorithms as essentially counting as votes for the autoritativeness of your site.
38. Get as many backlinks as possible.
