Optimize your pages for search engines

In web marketing, SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It is a technique for maximizing a web site's pages so the pages rank highly on an Internet search engine's ranking results for a given keyword search.

By "SEOing" your website, you maximize the visibility of the site by making its pages appear more frequently and more prominently in organic search results. This is done mainly by using relevant keywords but there is much more to it.

It would be unwise to think that I could encompass everything there is to know about SEO in even a few pages on this site. So what I'm doing is giving you a general idea of what you need to do for your site. These major optimization techniques which will give you a head start on most of your competition. I've also listed some "SEO Do Not's" as well.

Optimizing your page's basic aspects:

Webmaster DO's for web page SEO:

1). Do, design your site for your readers, not for getting high rankings in the search engines. If you maintain your site's contextual integrity and focus on the subject at hand the search engines will do the rest and really like your site. Make it a habit to structure your pages so they are search engine friendly though using the following basics...

2). Do, submit your site to search engines and directories. Without doing this it will probably take the big search engine spider's at least a year just to find out your site exists. See submit your site.

3). Do, use relevant keywords in the content of your pages and choose your keywords wisely. Studies have shown your primary keywords should be used in the content of your page at least 11 times for the page's primary keyword. This means you should use a single word at LEAST eleven times throughout the page for the page to be given prominent relevance in searches.

As a rule I use three main keywords (in the keywords meta tag) for a given page then add two more relevant words to the list which has relevancy to the page content but may not actually be found in the content. It's nowhere near stuffing but make sure these additional words are relevant and what someone might search for if looking for your page topic. SEO experts say it's less about the keywords meta tag though and more about text content within the page itself. I have to agree.

Also, use WordTracker for your keyword selection. This tool is a must have.

4). Do, use keywords in your url file name. Take this page for example. It's about web site SEO. The url file name is SEO-your-web-site.html. It wouldn't have been smart to name the page just "SEO" or something worse like "Page 4".

5). Do, use relevant keywords in your Page Title. This is critical. Obviously these words should be directly related to not only the file name but the content of your page as well.

For example, if you have a web page that talks about polydactyl cats and their genetic history you wouldn't write a page title that says something like "house cats are all different because of their genes". This may be true but if your description doesn't reference a specific portion of your page content....this will get you a search engine penalty. People disagree on this but I can tell you from experience having actual page content in the description is a big booster. I only use a maximum of two to three sentences of the most relevant part of the page.

6). Do, use alt text attributes in your images. And make sure to use relevant keywords in clickable images. Google pays attention to these.

7). Do, use a robots file on your site.

8). Do, get relevant back links to your site. As many as possible from sites that are similar in topic to your site. If possible make sure the people that are linking back to your site use relevant keywords in their link anchor text. I use an automated PHP driven link exchange for this site. See Marketer's Link Exchange.

Another way to way to get links back to your main web site is to join social media sites like MySpace, Facebook and Squidoo. Write articles on what you know best and use back links pointing to your site.

9). Go CMS. Yes, it's true and if you haven't heard it yet you will. In order to get great search engine rankings these days your site is better off being Web 2.0. I don't wholeheartedly believe that but there is certainly some merit to the claim.

The bottom line is dynamic sites (like blogs) get a lot of search engine attention and that's because of the massive amount of fresh content generated on them. That's not saying your standard HTML site can't rank highly, it's just getting harder by the day. If you like kickin it old school your content better be highly focused, cover all the bases and be published on a site that isn't lacking on proper SEO structure. But that's why you are reading this right. :) And in case you haven't noticed I prefer a standard html site with some dynamically generated content thrown in. RSS feeds are key. As are visitor generated content. Articles, links, comments...all are definitely worth implementing.  

10). Do, extend your domain registration. This SEO technique falls under the "better safe than sorry" category. Some web marketer's have claimed that, in order to counter the "fly by night" marketer's and spammer's Google now factors in the length of a domain registration to figure page rank. So for example, if your domain is only registered for a single year (and your renew it on that term) it would get less credit than a comparable site and content with a domain that has a three to five year registration. I couldn't believe it either...but that didn't stop me from increasing my marketing domain registration renewal lengths.

11). Do, update your site as often as possible. The more relevant and new content the better.

12) Do make sure your pages contain at least one heading tag.  This tag is defined as <h1 </h1> for the primary heading. Google uses these in conjunction with your title and url name for relevance.

I'll add to this list periodically over time.

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