Everyone loves a good tip, right?
Here are 55 quick tips for search engine optimization that even your mother
could use to get cooking. Well, not my mother, but you get my point. Most folks
with some web design and beginner SEO knowledge should be able to take these to
the bank without any problem.
1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down
menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the
spiders to follow.
2. Content is king, so be
sure to have good, well-written, and unique content that will focus on your
primary keyword or keyword phrase.
3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build
a network of quality backlinks. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason
for a site to link to you, you don’t want the link.
4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It
is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can
actually outrank one with a higher PR.
5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused
Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST
have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a
household name, your business name will probably get few searches.
6. Fresh content can help improve your
rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a
regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the
search engines.
7. Be sure links to your site and within your
site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your
target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here”
link.
8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and
put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to
help you get found in local searches.
9. Don’t design your web site without considering
SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your
expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based
site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or
images.
10. Use keywords and keyword phrases
appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and
even your domain name.
11. Check for canonicalization issues –
www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the
other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then
http://domain.com should redirect to it.
12. Check the link to your home page throughout
your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name?
If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com
and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.
Ditch the index.html or
default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.
13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common
problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either
all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for
best SEO results.
14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You
can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as
your SEO is concerned.
15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting
through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to
get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your
site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog
at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.
17. When link building, think quality, not
quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a
lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.
18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t
try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how
many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count
this against you rather than for you.
19. Text around your links should also
be related to your keywords. In other words, surround
the link with descriptive text.
20. If you are on a shared server, do a
blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their
negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.
21. Be aware that by
using services that block domain ownership information when you register a
domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.
22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize
your post title tag independently from your blog title.
23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links,
Popularity and Reputation.
24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This
can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your
ranking.
25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t
be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.
26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality
content. There can be a difference between unique
content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.
27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a
splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below
the fold.
28. Some of your most valuable links might
not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such
as newsletters and zines.
29. You get NOTHING from paid links except
a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious
sponsored links.
30. Links from .edu domains are
given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit
.edu sites that are looking for sponsors.
31. Give them something to talk about. Link baiting is simply good content.
32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword
phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several
keywords at once.
33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent
call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and
present.
34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The
search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.
35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority
sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts,
etc. or ask to reprint your content.
36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO
influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response
from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!
37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like
you should with your posts and web pages.Use descriptive,
keyword rich text in your title and description.
38. Use keyword rich captions with your images.
39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your
images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds
them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.
40. You’re better off letting your site pages be
found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation
and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.
41. There are two ways
to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:
(1) Log out of Google
(2) Append &pws=0 to
the end of your search URL in the search bar
42. Links (especially deep links) from a high
PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust,
so the back links will carry more weight.
43. Use absolute links. Not
only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like
links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get
backlink juice out of it.
44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky”
forwarding when moving to a new domain.This allows temporary
forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address
bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.
45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The
more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc.,
the better you will be able to compete in search.
46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by
the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list
it in your Google Webmaster Central account.
47. Videos that show up in Google blended search
results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit
your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to
name a few.
48. Surround video content on your pages with
keyword rich text. The search engines look at
surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.
49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your
photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches
are for a keyword plus one of those words.
50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google
Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the
new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help
your SEO efforts.
51. Add viral components to your web site or blog –
reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.
52. Broaden your range of services to
include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10
blue links anymore.
53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check
the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search
for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The
newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there
or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.
54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar
(you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the
correct one is included in the search engines,place the URL of your preferred page in your
sitemaps.
55. Check your server headers. Search
for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be
sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for
redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are
set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.