10 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips

Small businesses today are more enlightened about the need to comprehend and put into use the search engine optimization techniques, if only just the basics. As you read the various small business websites and blogs, you will quickly notice there is a lot of confusion what exactly the basics are. It is hard to know which SEO tactics and strategies really work unless you consult with a SEO professional, there is so much misinformation on this subject.

This article is part two of a SEO checklist designed specially for the webmasters and small business owners. Last week the subject was the 20 things not to do. This week will be covering what to do, basic things that you need to be sure are included on your website whether you do it yourself or hire a SEO professional to do for you.

Make a commitment to this process.

SEO is not just one time.

• The algorithms of the search engines routinely change, so some of the techniques that may have been successful last year might be out-dated this year. So you need to commit to the SEO for the long term to get the results you desire.

• Have patience. SEO does not give you instant results. The results make take several months, the smaller you are this is even more true, and if you are fairly new to doing business on the Internet, you will find this holds true for you too.

You need to ask question of the SEO company when hiring them.

• It is your job after all to understand what techniques the professional will use. So you need the specifics. You should understand the risks if there are any. Then research the company online, also about the techniques they told you the used, and so on.

Study SEO

If you are going to do this work yourself, you will need to study SEO to learn the tactics or techniques you need to use. Lucky for you, many great online resources exist, one being Search Engine Land, and many informative books you can refer too. “Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing” written by Jennifer Laycock, “Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day” written by Jennifer Grappone & Gradiva Couzin, and Aaron Wall’s “SEO Book”, are just a few that I recommend and have read.

• The web analytics need to be instituted from the beginning.

• You need to have well-defined goals to reach for your efforts with SEO, and the web analytics will track what is not effective and what is working for you.

Build a solid website.

• I am positive that you you want your site to show up in the results on the first page. You need to question, “Is this website good enough to be in the top 10 websites on this subject in the world?”. Be completely truthful with yourself. If it isn’t improve it.

Have a site map page included on the website.

• Spiders are not able to index pages if the can’t crawl them. The site map helps the spiders locate any pages of importance on your website, and it also allows the spider to know the hierarchy of your website. This fact is especially true if your website has a navigation menu that is hard to crawl. When your website is too big, you may need more than one site map page. Have each one contain not more than 100 links. In fact make it 75 to be on the safe side.

Be sure your URLs are SEO friendly.

• Place keywords into your file names and URLs, like mydomain.com/blue-widgets.html. Be careful not to overdo it like some people do. When a file has 3 or more hyphens it looks too much like spam and people may not what to click on the file. Note the bonus tip here: Place hyphens in file names and URLs not the underscores. Hyphens are looked at like a space where the underscores aren’t.

Perform research on the keywords at the beginning of your SEO project.

• When you have a small budget, try WordTracker or Keyword Discovery they both have free versions, you can also get more options in their paid versions. Don’t pay attention to the exact numbers these programs show; do pay attention to the relative volume between on keyword and another one though. You could also use the free AdWords Keyword Tool by Google, it does not exhibit exacts figures.

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A Few Easy and Powerful Search Engine Marketing and Optimisation Tips

Everyone appreciates some tips from time to time, right? Below are 15 effective tips on SEO that even a mother could cook good with. Maybe not my mom but get my drift?

• Most people who have some knowledge on beginner SEO and web design should be able to utilize these tips with no problem.

15 Search Engine Optimization On Page & Off Page Techniques & Tips

1. Adding Image Text

• If you are using Java script for image links, drop down menus, or image maps, be certain to add text links to your page too so that the spiders can crawl them.

2. Write copy for Searchers 1st & SEO 2nd

• Content is vitally important, so be certain to craft unique and well-written content which focuses on a primary keyword or phrase. Write your content for users first and search engines next, it has to be both user friendly and spider friendly to be completely successful.

3. Creating Incoming Link Profiles

• Links are second only to content in importance. Create a network filled with good quality back links utilizing the appropriate keyword phrase for the link. Remember that all links should have a logic to them as far as linking to you are you don’t want them.

4. STOP Obsessing Over PR

• Don’t get overly worried about PageRank. This is only one small part as far as the algorithm for ranking is concerned. A website having a lower PageRank can go onto rank better than a website with a PageRank that is higher.

5. Optimizing Title Tags

• Be certain to use an unique-keyword-targeted title tag on each page for your website. If you have to use your company’s name included, place it at the ending of the tag. Unless your website is part of a major name brand that is seen daily, you company name will most likely get much less searches.

6. Content is King

• New content also will assist in improving your rank. Add useful, new content on your web pages at regular intervals. The freshness of your content makes you website more relevant in the search engines’ eyes.

7. Keyword Link Text Misspellings

• Be certain the links included in your website and to your website utilize the right keyword phrase. An example of this is if “blue widgits” is your target phrase, then type in “blue widgits” for the link instead of typing in “click here”. New data suggests Google penalization for such commonly found activities.

8. Adding Keyword Phrases & Local Search Terms

• Concentrate on using search phrases more than just singular keywords, also place where you are located into the text (“Our Miami Store” not just “our store”), this will assist you being located in the local searches.

9. Optimizing for Search Engine Crawlibility

• Do not leave out SEO when designing your site. Be certain that whichever web designer you hire comprehends what you expect from SEO. Just retrofitting your website that had Flash-based features will not be enough. Spiders do not crawl images or Flash, they do crawl text though.

10. Using ALT Attributes

• Utilize keywords and your keyword phrases correctly within image ALT attributes, domain names, and your text links.

11. Avoiding Canonicalization With 301 Redirects

• See if there are any canonicalization problems like with non-www or www domains. Make up your mind which domain types you wish to us and then 301 redirect which one you not using to it. An example of this is is you want to use the http://www.domain.com then the http//:domain.com needs to be redirected to it.

12. Home Page URL Canonicalization

• Check on your link to the home page of your website throughout the entire site. Do you have index.html attached to the domain name you chose? If you do the you are splitting the links. The outside links should be http://www.domain.com/ then the internal links should be http://www.domain.com/index.html. Lose the default.php or index.html or however the page happens to be listed and just link back to the main domain you have. I will post a tutorial on how to fix this very soon, written by John S. Britsios.

13. Website Coding

• AJAX, Frames, and Flash all have a problem in common, you are not able to link to just one page. It is the whole site or linking to nothing at all. For the best results in SEO only use AJAX and Flash minimally and don’t fool with Frames in any way.

14. URL Extensions

• The file extension of your URL doesn’t make much a difference, there will be new data on this soon. It can be .htm, .html, .php, .asp and so on, and it will not create a difference with the SEO of your site.

15. Getting Indexed

• Do you have a new website that you need spidered? This could take weeks if you do the regular submission process at Google. The fastest way of getting your website spidered is to get it linked to a different high-quality website.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization Strategies Things To Avoid

Imagine you have a business selling kitchenware and cooking utensils. You build a website and it is doing great at selling frying pans and teakettles.

So, you begin to think of ways to get more traffic to your website and think you might try to rank high for terms that are not even related to kitchenware, but seem like they might be easy ones to get traffic from.

Well, it might work to get more traffic to your website but there is a good reason why not everyone is doing that. If SEO were really so simple, all of the websites out there would optimize their content for the most popular search terms so they could get a lot of traffic.

This desperate attempt to get traffic to your website by any means possible is not looked upon kindly by search engines. In fact, it is considered to be search engine spamming. This is definitely an SEO technique that you should avoid.

There are other techniques you should avoid as well. You do not want to work with a expert search engine optimization firm that uses any of these methods:

* Keyword stuffing;
* Having duplicate content on multiple pages of your site;
* Using unrelated links (link farming);
* URL cloaking, misleading redirects;
* Using misspelled words deliberately;
* Anything that tries to trick the search engines.

These unsavory methods are called “black hat” and only work for the short term, until the search engines catch on and delist the websites.

When the search engines figure out you are trying to fool them in some manner, they will penalize you. They usually do this by dropping you from the listings all together which makes it impossible for anyone to find your website.

Don’t think you can fool the search engines for long. They will catch you eventually if you use black hat methods. They also encourage human surfers to report suspicious activity, so it is very hard to operate unnoticed. You will have much better and more long lasting results using ethical SEO methods.

Is You Website Ranking Well?

Unless your website has a top listing in the major search engines, you probably would like to move up higher, even if you are already on the first page.

A good expert search engine optimization consultant knows that SEO is not a one time task, it is an ongoing process. It is something you must always be working on with your websites so they steadily climb higher and hold onto their spot once they get there.

The most important thing you can do is make sure your website is properly optimized for the search engines and then just let nature take its course. This is the organic SEO approach and it is effective even though the results are not immediate.

If you fail to utilize good SEO practices then your website is doomed as far as search engine positioning goes.

Customers who would have done business with you will pass you by not knowing your website even exists. The question is not whether you will use SEO as an important marketing strategy but how you will go about doing it.