. 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 using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is
no good, logical reason for that 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 major brand name that is 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. Not only should your
links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the 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 newletters
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. Linkbaiting 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 captions with your images. As with newspaper photos,
place 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.
