Basic SEO Tips to Get You Going

The response from my last post was pretty good, so I am doing a follow up with some real basic SEO tips. Keeping these 10 things in mind while you are creating new pages will help tremendously in your quest for SEO supremacy. If you have questions about any of these please post back. If you are unfamiliar with some of the terminology, use this site to look them up. Sorry I could link each essential SEO term individually but I don't have the time. If any of you know a quick way to make certain terms in my blog linkable to a definition, please advise.

One thing to keep in mind: These are tips to keep in mind while writing natural, compelling content not quick fixes to be used for spamming. Authors using this concept will get better ranking than authors that look to exploit loop-holes. If you are getting away with it, STOP (Google will eventually get you).

Here Are The Goods

1. Make sure the main keywords that are in your meta tags are included in you title tag. Doing this will help search engine spiders determine the subject matter of the page. Just be careful that the title tag is a clear well written sentence and not just a list of the keywords.
   
   Installment 1 of 10, Using keywords in your webpages blogs and articles



2. As you are creating your page, be sure that the keywords that appear in the content of your page are linked to other relevant pages on your site.



3. Be sure to include the text in your title tag in the body of your page. Again, a clearly written (concise) sentence that includes your keywords. Using the h1 tag will help you here too in two ways. The search engine spider will like to see that you are not hiding the meta data from your user, the h1 tag is usually a very large, prominent formatting of the text. Secondly, it helps with usability. When the web surfer sees your page come up in the search engine as a result of some keyword he or she typed in, the surfer is reassured they are in the right place as the large title on the page will directly relate to the keyword entered into the search engine.



4. Do not duplicate ANY of your titles on other pages. Make sure each page has a unique title. Having several pages with the same title may cause a search engine to flag it for duplicate content, a big no no.



5. As I stated in my other post 6 things that are sure to get you banned from Google, DO NOT STUFF THE META TAGS WITH MEANINGLESS KEYWORDS. If you are going to use this tag at all, make sure you are using keywords that are included in your writing. My experience is that this tag is pretty much ignored anyway. I myself take the time to enter keywords because it can't hurt (if done right). Stuff the meta tag and you are sure to pay the price.



6. Do not mess with link farms (also in my previous post), Google especially cracks down on this. If you are unclear what a link farm is, check out the SEO Glossary I posted above.



7. Be very careful with doorway pages. If you are unclear about them, don't do them. I don't even like using the words Doorway Pages, because Doorway Pages refer to a page that was built for a search engine spider and nothing else. Google and other search engines are refining their ranking criteria so that content appeals more to humans than algorithms, so when writing, keep the human in mind not the spiders. I try build pages that are easily read by humans that contain content that is relevant.



8. Since the title encapsulates the true content of your page, try repeating the title once in the content as a link to an outside source (open a new window of course). Make sure the source is reputable and helpful to the user. Double the effectiveness by getting that source to link back.



9. Use images on your pages. If you have the ability to name the images, name them using words that related to the content and the image i.e. hudson-valley-real-estate.jpg. Then use the alt tag within the image to thoroughly describe the image. This helps search engines, text browsers and seeing impaired users.



10. Lastly, submit to the search engines yourself if at all. It is like that if you link properly, the search engines will find you. If you want to submit to a search engine, do not use a service or software. Submit once and leave it alone. Resubmitting is almost never good.

The submission page for Google can be found here: http://www.google.com/addurl.html