top of page

What SEO Means?

A Complete Guide to Website Search Engine Optimization


What SEO Means?


What is SEO?

SEO is optimizing Web pages or whole sites to make them more search engine friendly, thus getting higher positions in search results.


SEO is sometimes also called SEO copyrighting because most of the techniques used to promote sites in search engines deal with text.

  • SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

  • SEO is all about optimizing a website for Search Engines.

  • SEO is the process of designing and developing a website to rank well in search engine results.

  • SEO improves the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines.

  • SEO is a subset of search engine marketing.

  • SEO is the art of ranking in search engines.

  • SEO is marketing by understanding how search algorithms work and what human visitors might search.

If you plan to do some basic SEO, you must understand how search engines work and which items are most important in SEO.


How do Search Engines work?

Search engines perform several activities to deliver search results

  • Crawling - is the process of fetching all the web pages linked to a website. A software performs this task, called a crawler or a spider (or Googlebot, as is the case with Google).

  • Indexing is creating an index for all the fetched web pages and keeping them into a giant database that you can retrieve later. Essentially, the process of indexing is identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page and assigning the page to particular keywords.

  • Processing - When a search request comes, the search engine processes it. i.e., it compares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages in the database.

  • Calculating Relevancy - Since more than one page likely contains the search string, the search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each page in its index to the search string.

  • Retrieving Results - The last step in search engines' activities is retrieving the best-matched results. After that, it is nothing more than simply displaying them in the browser.

Search engines such as Google and Bing often update their relevancy algorithm dozens of times per month. So, when you see changes in your rankings, it is due to an algorithmic shift or something else outside your control. Although all search engines' fundamental principle of operation is the same, the minor differences between their relevancy algorithms lead to significant changes in results relevancy.


What is SEO Copywriting?

SEO Copywriting is writing the viewable text on a web page to read well for the user and target specific search terms. Its purpose is to rank highly in the search engines for the targeted search terms. As well as the viewable text, SEO Copywriting usually optimizes other on-page elements for the targeted search terms. These include the Title, Description and Keywords tags, Headings, and Alt text. The idea behind SEO copywriting is that search engines want genuine content pages and not additional pages (often called "doorway pages") created to achieve high rankings.


What is Search Engine Rank?

When you search any keyword using a search engine, it displays thousands of results found in its database. A page ranking is measured by the position of web pages displayed in the search engine results. For example, if search engines put your web page in the first position, your page rank will be number 1 and within a high rank. SEO is the process of designing and developing a website to attend a high rank in search engine results.


What is on-page and off-page SEO?

Conceptually, there are two ways of doing SEO:

  • On-Page SEO includes providing good content, good keywords selection, putting keywords incorrectly, giving appropriate titles to every page, etc.

  • Off-Page SEO includes link building, increasing link popularity by submitting in open directories, search engines, link exchange, etc.


SEO Tactics and Methods

SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:

  1. 1. Techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design are White Hat SEO.

  2. 2. Techniques that search engines do not approve and attempt to minimize the effect of Black Hat or spamdexing.


White Hat SEO

An SEO tactic, technique, or method is considered as White Hat if it follows the following:

  • If the tactic, technique, or method conforms to the search engine's guidelines.

  • If the tactic, technique, or method does not involve any deception.

  • It ensures that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.

  • It ensures that the web page content has been created for the users, not just for search engines.

  • It ensures the good quality of the web pages

  • It ensures the helpful content available on the web pages

Always follow a White Hat SEO tactic, and do not try to fool your site visitors. Be honest, and you will get something more.


Black Hat or Spamdexing

An SEO tactic, technique, or method is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it follows the following:

  • If the tactic, technique, or method is trying to improve rankings that are disapproved of by the search engines and involve deception.

  • The tactic, technique, or method redirects users from a page built for search engines to more human-friendly.

  • Redirecting users to a page that was different from the page the Search Engine ranked.

  • If the tactic, technique, or method serves one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors. This method is called the Cloaking SEO tactic.

  • If the tactic, technique, or method uses hidden or invisible text or the page background color, using tiny font size or hiding them within the HTML code such as "no frame" sections.

  • If the tactic, technique, or method repeats keywords in the Meta tags and uses unrelated keywords to the site's content. This technique is called Meta tag stuffing.

  • The tactic, technique, or method calculates keywords within a page to raise the page's keyword count, variety, and density. This tactic is called Keyword stuffing.

  • Creating low-quality web pages containing very little content but are instead stuffed with similar keywords and phrases. These pages are called Doorway or Gateway Pages.

  • Mirror websites by hosting multiple websites, all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs.

  • Creating a rogue copy of a popular website that shows content similar to a web crawler's original content redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites. This tactic is called Page hijacking.


Always be aware of adopting any of the above Black Hat tactics to improve your site's rank. Unfortunately, search engines are smart enough to identify all the above properties of your site, and ultimately you will not get anything.


SEO Website Domain

When you start thinking of doing a business through the internet, you should first think about your website domain name. However, before you choose a domain name, you should consider the following:

  • Who would be your target audience?

  • What do you intend to sell to them? Is it a tangible item or just text content?

  • What will make your business idea unique or different than everything else that is already on the market?

Many people think it is essential to have keywords in a domain. Keywords in the domain name are usually necessary but can be done while keeping the domain name short, memorable, and free of hyphens. Using keywords in your domain name gives you a definite competitive advantage over your competitors. Having your keywords in your domain name can increase click-through rates on search engine listings and paid ads and make it easier to use your keywords in getting keyword-rich descriptive inbound links.

Avoid buying long and confusing domain names. For example, many people separate the words in their domain names using either dashes or hyphens. The domain's name itself was a significant ranking factor in the past, but now that search engines have advanced, it is no longer an essential factor.


Keep two to three words in your domain name, and it will be more memorable. Some of the most notable websites do a great job of branding by creating their word. Few examples are eBay, Yahoo!, Expedia, Slashdot, Fark, Wikipedia, and Google. You should be able to say it over the telephone once, and the other person should know how to spell it, and they should be able to guess about what you sell.


Guru Mantra

You should be able to answer the following questions:

  • Why do I want to build my website? Why should people buy off your site and not from other sites? What makes you different from others?

  • Who is your target audience, and what do you intend to sell to them?

  • List 5 - 10 websites which you think are fantastic. Now think, why are they unique?

  • Create five different domain names. Please make at least 1 of them funny. Tell them to a half dozen people and see which ones are the most memorable. You will get more honest feedback if the people do not know you well.

  • Buy your domain name, which is more catchy, memorable, and relevant to your business.


SEO Relevant Filename

One of the simplest methods to improve your search engine optimization is how your files are named. Unfortunately, search engines like Google give too much importance to file names. Instead, it would be best to think about what you will put on your web page and then give a relevant file name to this page.

Just try giving any keyword in the Google search engine, and you will find file names highlighted with the keyword you have provided; Thus, simply proving that your file name has appropriate keywords.


File Naming Style

· The filename should preferably be short and descriptive. But, of course, it is always good to use the exact keywords in the file name and page title.

· Do not use filenames like service.htm or job.htm but use an actual service name in your file name like computer-repairing.htm.

· Do not use more than 3-4 words in the file name; separate them with hyphens rather than underscores. Try to use two keywords if possible.


File Name Example

Here is a preference of filenames that are from SEO and a user's point of view.

  • Slazenger-brand-balls.html

  • Wimbledon-brand-balls.html

  • Wilson-brand-balls.html

Notice that hyphens rather than underscore separate keywords. Google sees file names as follows:

SEO-relevant-filename as SEO relevant filename(good)

But Google sees

seo_relevant_filename as seorelevantfilename (not good)


File Extension

.html, .htm, and .php, and any other extension do NOTHING for your visitors. They are simply a means of offloading some of the work configuring your webserver properly onto your visitors. So, in effect, you are asking them to tell your webserver HOW to produce the page, not which one?

Many webmasters think that it is a good idea to use filename without using an extension. It may help you but not a whole lot.


URL Sub Directory Name

From a Search Engine Optimization point of view, the URL sub-directory name hardly matters. You try giving any keyword in any search, and you will not find any sub-directory name matching your keywords. But from the user's point of view, you should keep an abbreviated sub-directory name.


Guru Mantra

I will suggest keeping the following points in mind before naming your files:

  • Use web pages file names short, simple, descriptive, and relevant to the page's content.

  • Try to use a maximum of 3-4 keywords in your file name, and these keywords should also appear in your web page title.

  • Practice separating all keywords with a hyphen rather than with an underscore.

  • Keep your sub-directories name as shorter as possible.

  • Keep the file size less than 101K because Google chops almost everything above that.


SEO Design & Layout

A website design and layout give the first impression of your site. Unfortunately, there are too many fancy sites, and frequent internet users will reach those sites and exit without creating a single click.

Search Engines are brilliant, but they are software and not human beings who will read their interest content. If you make your site too complicated, then the Search Engine will not be able to parse your site's content correctly, and indexing would not be efficient, which will result in a low rank. The actual page content should have a keyword density of about 10% and should weigh in at 200 words - but there are as many opinions about this as there are SEO experts. Some say keyword density should be 5%, and some say it should be 20%. 10% works just fine.


Here are few guidelines to consider while designing a web page.

  • You should have more text content than HTML elements.

  • No frames. They are the enemies of search engines, and search engines are enemies of frames.

  • No ads if possible; most of the ads use JavaScript, which is not to be used.

  • No JavaScript. If you need JavaScript, call it from an external file rather than dumping the code in the HTML file. JavaScript drop-down menus prevent spiders from crawling beyond your homepage. If you use them, be sure to include text links at the bottom of the page.

  • Nothing that does not fit perfectly into the page topic; There should be no doubt what your page is about in the search engine's mind (or the user's mind).

  • No unnecessary directories. Keep your files as close to the root as possible.

  • No fancy stuff (Flash, Splash, Animated Gifs, Rollovers, etc.) unless necessary.


SEO Optimized Keywords

In web terminology, a keyword is a term that a person enters into a search engine to find specific information. Most people enter search phrases that consist of between two and five words. Such phrases may be called search phrases, keyword phrases, query phrases, or just keywords. Good keyword phrases are specific and descriptive. There are the following concepts related to Keywords that help in optimizing keywords on a web page.


Keyword Frequency

Keyword Frequency is calculated as how often does a keyword appears in a site's title or description. However, you do not want to go overboard with frequency since if you repeat a word too many times on some search engines, you will be penalized for "spamming" or keyword stuffing. Therefore, repeat keywords in your document often and 3-7 times in META tags.


Keyword Weight

Keyword Weight refers to the number of keywords appearing on your Web page compared to the total number of words appearing on that same page. Some search engines consider this when determining the rank of your website for a particular keyword search.

One technique that often works well is to create some smaller pages, generally just a paragraph long, which emphasize a particular keyword. Keeping the overall number of words to a minimum will increase the "weight" of the keyword you are highlighting.


Keyword Proximity

Keyword Proximity is the placement of keywords on a web page in relation to each other or, in some cases, associated with different words with a similar meaning as the queried keyword.

For search engines that grade a keyword match by keyword proximity, the related phrase "home loans" will outrank a citation that mentions. home mortgage loans—assuming that you are searching only for the phrase "home loans."


Keyword Prominence

Keyword Prominence measures how early or high up the keywords are found on a page—having keywords in the first heading and the first paragraph (first 20 words or so) on a page.


Keyword Placement

WHERE your keywords are placed on a page is very important. For example, placing the keywords in the page's title or the Heading tags will give it more relevancy in most search engines. On other search engines, placing keywords in the link text, which is the part that is underlined on the screen in a browser, can add more relevancy to those words.


Best Places to Put Keywords

Here is a list of places where you should try to use your main keywords.

  • Keywords in the <title> tag(s).

  • Keywords in the <meta name="description">

  • Keywords in the <meta name="keyword">

  • Keywords in <h1> or other headline tags.

  • Keywords in the <a href="http://yourcompany.com">keywords</a> link tags.

  • Keywords in the body copy.

  • Keywords in alt tags.

  • Keywords in <! -- insert comments here> comments tags.

  • Keywords contained in the URL or site address, e.g., http://www.keyword.com/keywordkeyword.htm.


Finding Keywords

There are many ways to find keywords for your website. Some good keyword ideas are:

  • Words people would search to find your product or service.

  • Problems your prospective customers may be trying to solve with your product or service.

  • Keyword tags on competitors' websites.

  • Visible page copy on competitors' websites.

  • The related search suggestions on top search engines.

  • By using an online tool like Google Keyword Tool

  • By analyzing your website carefully and finding out proper keywords. An expert SEO copywriter can do this task.

  • Pay attention to stemming for your keywords - Particularly to what the root word is and what Google considers a match for that word when optimizing pages over time.

  • You can brainstorm to identify the correct keywords for your site.


What is Word Stemming?

Google uses word stemming. Word stemming allows all forms - singular, plural, verb form, and similar words-returned for a given search query. So, if someone types in "house plans," not only will pages that are optimized for that phrase would be returned, but so will pages that contain all variations of that phrase, for example: "house plan," "house planning," "house planner." So, it would be best if you had some understanding of keywords, how to identify them, and where to use them.


SEO Optimized Meta tags

There are two important meta tags; are the meta description and meta keyword tags. Some search engines may display the meta description as part of the search results, but the meta keywords tags should not appear in search results.

The consensus among SEO experts claims that meta tags are dead. Even so, many of these same experts continue to use meta tags in their sites.

For Google, adding the Description Meta Tag will not boost the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), but it might be used for the description for your SERP listings in Google. Likewise, Yahoo says they use the Keyword Meta Tags when it ranks a page. So, it makes sense to add one for Yahoo and any other minor search engines that still use.


What do the Meta Tags Look Like?

You can add following in the head section of the web page:

 

<meta name="keywords" content="KEYWORD1 KEYWORD2 KEYPHRASE1 etc. about 30 to 40 unique words">

<meta name="description" content="An accurate, keyword-rich description about 150 characters">

 

Meta Description Tag Tips:

There are a few essential tips for good meta description tags:

  • Use keywords in your meta description tags.

  • Try not to repeat the words overly often, but try to use multiple syntaxes of your keywords.

  • There should not be more than 150 characters in a description meta tag of a single web page.

  • Use a different meta description tag for each page, as each page is different and stands a better chance of being found if you place a good title and description on it.


Meta Keywords Tag Tips

There are few essential tips for good meta keywords tags. Please refer to the previous section on identifying good keywords.

  • Use synonyms

  • Use unique keywords

  • There is no need to repeat any given phrase.

  • You can repeat any word for an unlimited amount of time if it is part of a different phrase each time.


Robots Meta Tag

The important meta tag that you may need sometimes is the Robots Meta Tag which looks like this:

meta name="robots" content="no index, no follow">

Using the above meta tag, you can tell a spider or robot that you do not want some of your pages indexed or your links followed.


SEO Title Optimization

Now that you understand the meaning of the HTML TITLE tag, which is inside the head tag. The page title is displayed in the title bar of your browser window, which is also what is said when you bookmark a page or add it to your browser Favorites. Thus, this is the one place on a web page where your keywords MUST be present. Correct use of keywords in the title of every page of your website is essential to Google - particularly for the home page. If you do nothing else to optimize your site, remember to do this!


The title should not consist of more than nine words or 60 characters, using your keywords at the beginning of the title. Since Google is looking for relevant keywords in the title, this means you should NOT include your company name in the title unless your company name is very well known. Improper or nonexistent use of titles in web pages will keep more websites out of top rankings on Google than any other factor except for lack of relevant content on a page or a lack of quality links from other websites that point to your site.


Best Practices for Creating Titles:

Here are some best practices you should follow for creating titles on pages:

  • Each page should have a unique title.

  • If practical, try to include your primary keyword phrase in every title of every page.

  • Begin the title of your home page with your primary keyword phrase, followed by your best secondary keyword phrases.

  • Use specific variations to your primary keyword phrase on your particular product, service, or content pages.

  • If you must include your company name, put it at the end of the title.

  • Use the best form, plural or singular, for your keywords.

  • Do not overdo it - do not repeat your keywords more than 2 - 3 times in the title

  • Make sure the <title> tag is the first element in your page's <head> section - this makes it easier to find by Google.


SEO Optimized Anchors

Use descriptive anchor text for all your text links. Most search engines consider the anchor text of incoming links when ranking pages. Here is an example of an anchor:

<a href="otherpage.htm" title="Anchor Title">Anchor Text</a>


Here are some essential points to notice about anchors:

  • The anchor title plays a vital role and is seen by most search engines. So, your anchor title should have appropriate keywords. Second, the anchor title will help site visitors using a balloon and displaying written text.

  • The anchor text is another critical part that should be selected very carefully because this text will be used not only by search engines but also for navigation purposes. Therefore, you should try to use the best keywords in your anchor text.

  • The otherpage.htm is the link to another web page. This link could be to an external site. You should take care that this web page should exist; otherwise, it will be called a broken link, and broken links give a terrible impression to search engines as website visitors.

Another example of an anchor could be as follows:

<a href="otherpage.htm" title="Anchor Title"> <img src="image.gif" alt="keywords" /> </a>


In this case, Anchor Text has been replaced by an image. So, while using an image in place of an anchor text, you should check for a proper alt tag. An image alt tag should have appropriate keywords.




Content Is the King

Content includes what you see on the site: the text, graphics, and even links to the outside world. However, I would condemn excessive graphics because they do not search engine friendly, and users feel irritated when they download these graphics, especially over a slow network.

Thousands of articles, books, and forum entries detail how to make your site search engine friendly, but ultimately, one rule stands above the rest: Content is king. This rule is in the past now, and it is safe to say that unique, high-quality, unduplicated content is the king. Superior the quality of your content; the higher the ranking you achieve, the more traffic you gain and the greater the popularity of your website. Search engines prefer good quality sites in their index and search results.


A relevant, fresh, and timely content is crucial to attracting and keeping visitors to your web pages. It will help you both draw traffic from search engines and create audience loyalty.


Unique, High-Quality Content:

When people visit a website for information, they want your unique spin on a topic.

  • How is your material or content unique?

  • Is that uniqueness evident and easy to find and understand?

Visitors want unique, high-quality site content. It is your home page content, and all the linked pages should have helpful and easy-to-understand content. These days search engines have become very smart, and they can understand complete grammar and complete phrases. So, while ranking a page against others, how much rich content is available on a page matters. Search engines give sites with duplicated, syndicated, or free content red flags.


SEO Content Writing (Copy Writing):

SEO Content Writing (also called SEO Copy Writing) involves integrating keywords and informative phrases that make up your website's actual content.


While writing your web page content, the following tips may help you keep it better than others.

  • The content should be directed to the specified target audience.

  • Keyword density is strictly adhered to as per search engine guidelines.

  • Titles should always be eye-catchers, compelling your visitors to read on and want what you have to offer on your website.

  • Do not use confusing and complex language. Instead, use short statements to make your content more understandable.

  • Keep your web pages short, and do not put all the content on a single page.

  • Divide your web page content also into short paragraphs.


Other advantages of having great content:

It is SEO you must think about and many factors that will make your site popular.

  • If your site is having something unique, then people would suggest it to their friends.

  • Other webmasters would like to create a link to your site on their sites

  • Your site visitors will start trusting your site, and they will look forward to additional content and keep coming repeatedly.

  • Assuming any search engine has listed you out, internet users will only click on that page whose content snippet would look unique and exciting.


Conclusion

Creating, editing, and promoting unique, high-quality content is difficult and time-consuming. But in the end, the golden rule of SEO is that content is the king. It is not just because of a search engine, but it is for your site visitors. A page that people read is better than a page that is read by bots. So please write your content after going at it with serious thought. Keep your title, keywords, link text, meta tags up-to-date, unique, and exciting. I am sure you will win.


XHTML Verification for Web Site

You designed and developed a website, but how would you know if you have correctly put all the HTML syntax. Almost all browsers do not complain against your wrong syntax, but wrong is wrong. Many SEO experts claim that SEO is not dependent on on-site HTML/XHTML verification, but I will tell you various reasons why your site should be W3C Compliance.


Why HTML/XHTML Verification is Required?

There are various reasons to verify your web page before hosting it over the internet.

  • Any web page quality depends on how well you have written your web page. It should be syntactically correct and should pass all the Quality Gates.

  • When any Search Engine does indexing for your web page content, it might get confused if your HTML tags are not written correctly, and much of the web page content might not be indexed appropriately.

  • There might be many HTML tags that you are using on your web page but then have been depreciated, and many of the search engines also do not support them.

  • Good webmasters always appreciate consistency, HTML Code Beauty, and Process Compliance.


What Is W3C Compliance?

The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium, and since 1994, the W3C has provided the guidelines by which websites and web pages should be structured and created. Here are the links to validate your web pages:

  • Validate HTML/XHTML File against W3C Standard HTML/XHTML Validator.

  • Validate CSS File against W3C Standard CSS Validator.

While doing verification, you will get errors along with appropriate reasons. All the validations will be done using XHTML DTD, which is a refined version of HTML.


Rules for W3C Compliance

These are the following rules which you should keep in mind while writing your web pages.

  • Use the XHTML declaration statements to start every XHTML page:

 

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC

"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">


 
  • Every tag must be closed.

  • The head and body tags are now mandatory.

  • Empty tags get a terminating slash. An empty tag is a tag that does not require an end tag. Examples include <br> and <hr>.

 

<BR> is now <br />.

<HR> is now <hr />.

<IMG SRC="--"> is now <img src="--" />

 
  • All tags must be lower case. This does not apply to attributes, only tags. For example, both formats are acceptable under the XHTML DTD:

 

<FONT color="#ffffcc"> is invalid

<font color="#ffffcc"> is valid

<font color="#FFFFCC"> is also valid

 
  • All the attribute values should be put in a with-in double quote.

  • Tags may not be nested

 

<b><i>Text</b></i> This is invalid

<b><i>Text</i></b> This is valid

 

The <pre> tag should not contain: img, object, big, small, sub, or sup.

  • One <form> tag cannot be inside another <form> tag.

  • If your code contains a &, it must be written as &amp.

  • Any use of CSS should use all lower-case lettering.


SEO Expert Hiring

If you are serious about SEO and not getting the expected result, the better choice is to hire an SEO expert. These are the following tasks that should be taken care of by SEO experts:

  • Code validation and clean up - Ensure that code is SE Friendly and standard compliant.

  • Site Structure - Building a semantic structure/theme and ensure that the URLs are spider-friendly.

  • On-Page optimization - Page Title, copywriting, Call to action, etc.

  • Quality link building - Securing one-way links from relevant sites.

  • Keyword research - Building a list of key phrases relevant to your business.

  • Creating Quality Content - Build optimized pages around terms discovered through keyword research.

  • Off-Page Optimization - Blogs, Press Releases, Article Submissions

If you are confident that you have the required skills, you can do all the above activities; otherwise, it is worth seeking help from SEO Companies or hiring any SEO Specialist.


Choosing an SEO Expert or Company

The most challenging part is knowing how to choose the correct SEO Expert or SEO Company. But we are giving you a few guidelines which can help you for the same.

  • Start searching through your friends and business partners.

  • Post your queries in SEO Forums to get feedback from the community.

  • Check other sites' ranks which they already have optimized.

  • Do not go for SEO companies making automated submissions etc.

  • Do not go for SEO companies doing Bulk Hat tricks.

  • Do not look for cheap SEO because of some pennies; you can lose more. But take care, high price also does not guarantee high quality.

  • Take guarantee if possible for a particular rank and any particular search engine.

  • User SEO Expert or Company name in Google to find more information about them.

  • Do not go just because of their fancy site and good articles available on their site.

  • Do not only go for testimonials available on their sites.

I cannot list out all the factors here because there may be different situations and different views. So, it would help if you were smart enough to think about what is wrong and what is good.


SEO Link Building

Link building is the SEO practice of obtaining links from external websites to your own to improve direct referrals, i.e., people clicking on the links and search engine ranking. Thus, link building is all about increasing your site's link popularity.

Website crawlers will go to a site repeatedly who is ranking in the search engine is high. You can verify this fact by putting your site on a high-rank site. If your site link is available on a high-rank website, your site will be indexed within 24Hrs.


How to Increase Link Popularity?

There are various ways of increasing your website link popularity. Here is a listing of some essential tips which are easily doable.

  • Submit your site in popular search engines manually. Do not go for automated submission.

  • Get your site listed in open directory projects like Google and Bing. Getting listed in these directories will give your site a boost in link popularity and improve search engine ranking in other search engines.

  • Provide high-quality content - people will naturally link to your site if you have what they want and it is available nowhere else.

  • Leverage your relations with other webmasters. For example, put your site link on their sites. One-way links often count for more than reciprocal links.

  • Participate in a link exchange program. Find the top 20 sites doing the same business and contact them for reciprocal links. Link exchange between unrelated sites might affect the ranking of websites in the search engine.

  • If you are subscribed to a forum and do not have any restrictions to keep your site link as your signature, it can help you increase your site popularity.

  • Submit your site to bookmark sites like DIGG, and Slashdot, etc. Before submitting, please go through their spam policy.

  • Write good articles on blogging sites and give a few references of your links within those articles.

  • Keep providing good content to your site visitors. Try to keep them busy on your site. If possible, create forums, newsletters, blogs, etc.

  • Buy a place on a high-rank website where you can put your link.

  • Subscribe to the Google AdWords program to drive traffic towards your site.

  • You can go for an alternative advertising option to increase the number of hits on your site, resulting in your site link popularity.

There are other ways, but you will need to spend some dollars for such an alternative.


Miscellaneous Techniques

There are other various tips related to SEO. However, these tips have not been organized in a particular category.


Do not do the following:

  • Do not keep the hidden text on your web pages.

  • Do not create alt image spamming by putting the wrong keywords.

  • Do not use meta tags stuffing.

  • Do not use frames and flash on your site.

  • Do not exchange your links with black-listed sites.

  • Do not try to fool your site visitors by using misspelled keywords.

  • Do not send spam emails to thousands of email IDs.

  • Do not use too many graphics on your site.

  • Do not create too many doorway pages.

  • Do not try to create duplicate content of pages.

  • Do not submit your website many times in a single search engine.

  • Do not use sub-directory depth more than 1-2.

  • Do not create too many dynamic pages. Instead, try to convert them into static pages.

  • Do not bloat your pages with code.

  • Do not nest your pages.


Do the following

Other various tips can help you to optimize your website for many search engines.

  • Create a log of pages, and each page should contain a minimum of about 200 visible words of text to maximize relevance with Google.

  • Create a Sitemap, Help, FAQ, About Us, Link to Us, Copyright, Disclaimer, Privacy Policy pages on a mandatory basis.

  • Create a home page link to each web page and provide easy navigation through all the pages.

  • Pay attention to your dynamic page URLs. Google can crawl and index dynamic pages if you do not have more than two parameters in the URL.

  • Check your complete site for broken links. Broken links will reduce your other pages' rank as well.


SEO Summary

We have covered almost all major concepts related to Search Engine Optimization. Now you are familiar with the most frequently used SEO-related terminology as well. You have learned how to optimize keywords, title, alt, meta tags, anchor, and other text from an SEO point of view. You also have learned the importance of having good content on your website. In the Miscellaneous Techniques section, we have suggested other vital points that will help you optimize your website.

So, in brief, the ethical strategies for achieving optimal ranking in the search engines are:

  • All Pages must conform with W3C Standards

  • Keyword Density is never abusive

  • Always include: Robots.txt, Sitemap.xml, & Urllist.txt

  • Keywords are prominent in the Title, META tags, & Headings

  • Alt Tags and Title Tags are not forgotten

  • Nomenclature is fundamental to being indexed

0 Kommentare

Comentários


bottom of page