Ten Tips to SEO your Blog or Business Website.
There is a ton of research available online for How to properly SEO tune your website but beware!
Some of the information out there will be outdated, some will be pointless waste of time, some will be incomplete and some will be outright wrong and your ticket to a Google delisting ban from search results altogether. Please read about Googles latest SEO rules and tips here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html
Do these 10 steps to start your program of search engine strength training:
Start by getting Jeff Johnsons SEO blog traffic software available free HERE
1. Research your site on the top search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN see how many links your site has—type link:http://www.mysitename.com in the Google search box. Search key terms and see who ranks high. Check how many links they have using a Google advanced search— “link:http://www.highrankingsite.com”
2. Directory listings. Yahoo will cost you about 300$ to register for but their listing carries alot of weight and the process of applying will get you more prepared for the longer, more difficult process of applying for dmoz. Some sites will find it difficult if not impossible to be listed in Dmoz. Kinda ironic that the “open source” directory is such a pain to actually get into.
3. Keyword research. The terms you personally use to describe your business may not be the terms people are searching on. it is critically important to use a keyword selection tool like Market Samurai or Google keyword tool to get some directional data on search term frequency and actual search phrases. Try to get inside the thought process that people follow when they are searching for a solution to their needs which is hopefully YOUR product.
4. Use well chosen valuable keyword terms in the file names of your pages. These are the names that show up in the universal resource locator (url) “address” bar at the top of your browser (e.g., http://www.mywebsite.com/search_term_everyone_uses). Search engines place heavy emphasis on file names.
5. Use meta tags at the top of your HTML using this syntax <META NAME = “KEYWORDS” CONTENT=”popular term 1, key phase 2″> page. Search engines seemeta tags but browsers do not. Be sure to include relevant popular terms in the tags but dont overdo it, 6 to 10 should be fine.
6. Include a site map. WordPress blogs have a great plugin available. Search spiders use site maps to index your site. Google webmaster tools has sitemap generator and other useful tools (www.google.com/webmasters/tools).
7. Use alternate text aka “alt tags” to describe images: <IMG SRC=”filename” ALT=”Description”>. Search engines look for text, not images. These tags also make your site more readable and accessible for the visually impaired or those that use text reader programs to help their surfing.
8. Use heading text (h1…h6) to highlight key terms <h1>Key Term</h1>, for section headers instead of bold and italics <b>, <i>. Search engines place more emphasis on heading text. A good website template should have editing options that automates this or make this easy. In wordpress blogs their all in one seo plugin helps
9. Internal navigation should be easy and accessible. Make sure the main pages in your site can be reached through internal text links, not just menu navigation. Search engines cannot see graphical buttons or the text in them.
10. Link building campaign with authority sites. This final item could ( and will!! stay tuned later) become an entire series in and of itself. Stompernet site-seer does analysis on the link density and details of any site, you could analyze a competitors website and follow up those links that appear to come from sites potentially interested in YOUR products. Analyze the sites to see where/how they link to others and offer similar links. Industry directories and reference lists are a good start. Ezinearticles.com , press releases through PRWEB.com and social media sites like Twitter, Myspace, Linkedin all have some positive effect in placing your business and brand in front of your target audience.
A wrong move could cost you more than just wasted time, don’t fall prey to quick fixes spam or link exchange schemes. Dirty Tricks to exploit search engine algorithms will eventually backfire, resulting in penalties in the form of ranking downgrades or even outright bans from appearing in natural search pages alltogether.
Stick to the basics, be patient, and move on.
Lather, rinse repeat.
Organic optimization is not a full-time job (unless you do it for a network of companies).
Taking these basic 10 steps puts you on the path to search engine strength. Remember, links, content, design, and persistence win the race. Cultivating your site with valuable content will have the added bonus of increasing both your customers appreciation for you, but an improved search engine ranking and improved targeted traffic.
