Search Engine Optimization Tips
This page offers search engine optimization tips and advice. The search engine optimization (SEO) tips are provided to help increase your site search engine ranking and search engine optimization.
Site Organization
Make sure that your site has an organized hierarchy and that every page is linked somehow. A good way to do this is to create a sitemap for your website. The sitemap should include links to every page in your website. Also, check for broken links and correct HTML.
Keywords
Your site needs to include keywords and phrases that people will be searching for on search engines. Choose relevant and specific keywords to target your market of visitors. If you were shopping for this product, what keywords would you search under? Make sure to add these keywords to your site. You can also check your top competitors sites and see what keywords they are using. The keyword research you do, the more competitive your website will be. In your keyword marketing, maximize the number of keyword phrases and their variations that a visitor might be searching on in search engines. You can also incorporate:
- synonyms (use a thesaurus to find them)
- hyphenated and non-hyphenated
- abbreviations and misspellings
- acronyms
- change the order of the words in your phrases
- use your city and state in your key phrases as many people search locally. Also, add surrounding cities and counties.
Here are some key resources to help you with your keyword research and marketing:
Google's Keyword Tool (Sandbox) - Get ideas for new keywords that can help you improve your ad relevance. If you're running your ads on broad-matched keywords, you may also find additional terms that may trigger your ads.
Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool - Enter in a keyword and Overture returns all the prior month's searches that include you phrase.
Meta Tags
Having meta tags at the beginning of your HTML code is crucial to begin ranked on search engine search results. Major engines like AltaVista, InfoSeek, Lycos, Excite, MSN search, Google and HotBot all rely on meta tags when they crawl your site for indexing. To see what your meta tags look like when using your browser to go "view then "source" or "page source". This will show your the HTML of your website. Your meta tags should reside somewhere between your <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags near the top of your page.
You should focus on TITLE, DESCRIPTION & KEYWORDS when you do your meta tag optimization.
- TITLE: When spidering your site, search engine agents will go first to the <TITLE> tag. The title should be descriptive and loaded with keywords. The <TITLE> tag is what a browser will display in its title bar, and what a search engine displays when your site will be listed. You should use no more than 100 characters.
- DESCRIPTION: Your description tags look like this:
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Enter your description here.."> This will be the text that shows up after the Title of your website in the search engine index listing. Your Description tag also supports your Title Keyword tags and Meta Keywords Tags resulting in optimized search engine placement. You should use no more that 250 characters. - KEYWORDS: Your meta keywords look like this:
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Enter your keywords here.."> These keywords will not appear on search engines but the search engines will use them to rank your site. Avoid placing tons of repetitive keywords. Never duplicate keywords or keyword-phrases in your Meta Keywords list.
Text vs Images:
Try to use text instead of images of display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images.
Deceptive Practices to Avoid:
Google does not like deceptive practices and if you use them, Google may lover your ranking. Here are some things to avoid:
- Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
- Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
- Don't send automated queries to Google.
- Don't load use irrelevant keywords to try to drive traffic to your site.
- Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
- Avoid doorway pages created just for search engines, or other cookie cutter approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
