We have done a fair bit of SEO, with a range of successes, so I though I'd try to "tipout" what I have learnt from my experience...

Top Tip:

Part 1) Get The Basics Right. Build your site from the ground up with two main goals in mind. __________________________________________________ __________________________ Rule 1) Make Your Site Useable... Firstly you need to think about your users and their experience when they use your website. They must be a priority; your website must be nice to look at, and nice to use. Don't ever think that you can go to far in helping them navigate around your site. Having users that get lost or confused is an absolute no-no. Try to think of every conceivable way that someone could have reached a page, and cater for them. Every error should contain a solution. Never, ever write an error message that says "An unknown error has occurred", think about why that error has occurred and provide possible solutions. Okay, I've digressed a little already - rule 1 isn't going to directly help your SEO efforts but it needs be be said so that its out of the way, because without rule 1 your not going to have any need what-so-ever for what follows! Rule 2) Say No To Session ID's... Now, your second primary goal has to be optimizing for search engines - this after all is where the vast majority of you free targeted traffic will come from, and as we all know free traffic is the best type! Steer clear of session ID's, session ID's are used to track users, keep them in your cookies or in a session variable - never in the URL. Search engines will NOT cache a page with a session ID in the URL. Rule 3) Static URL's Are Your Friend... Static URL's are preferable to dynamic URL's, URL's such as http://www.heresalink.com/directory/heres-an-article/ (please note the hyphens) are generally considered better than URL's such as http://www.heresalink.com/page.html?article=104. This is because its easier for the search engines to follow and cache these pages. Hyphens are generally considered better than underscores because search engines will separate your URL using the hyphens, you then have as set of ready made keywords for your page. Rule 4) Get You Internal Linking Structure Right... Try to build in a linking structure that allows easy access to every page, users need to be able to reach most pages in as few clicks as possible. This is sometimes called the "3 click rule", as this is often quoted as the maximum number of clicks that should be nessesary to reach any given page. Search engines such as Google assign a rank - PageRank - to every page of your website, generally the further it is from your homepage the lower the PageRank will be. So as long as you don't break rule 1, try to link as many pages as you can from your homepage. If your site is large, don't get carried away, rule 1 still applies as the most important, and also remember that deep linking - that is linking to pages other than your homepage - will help bring visitors directly into your site. Possibly meaning that they are just 3 clicks away, as they have bypassed your homepage. Part 2) Content Is King. "On page" and "In site" optimization - Again I'll stress before I start don't break rule 1! Each of your pages needs to "be" about something, every page needs a purpose and a goal, and the search engines need to be able to make a "best guess" at this purpose. How do they do this? Well there are two main factors, and they are; firstly what the actual page says itself (explained here in part 2) and what other pages say about it (Part 3). __________________________________________________ __________________________ Rule 5) Give Every Page A Unique Title... Use a short descriptive title for each page - this is very important - each page should be titled using the <title> tag. Title tags are a strict requirement of valid HTML, every page must have a title tag so use it well. Make each page with a UNIQY title!! If you have a page about holidays in Venice, make sure that your title tag says: "Holidays in Venice" or something similar. A cardinal sin of website design is to use the same title for every page! It doesn't help one bit with your SEO efforts. Rule 6) Don't Neglect Your Meta Tags... Meta tags are depreciated these days - they are not used as much as they once were but this doesn't mean that you shouldn't make good use of them. Each page should have at least a description and a keywords tag, this will help direct the search engines to "discovering" the purpose of your page. It will also be useful in the management of your pages and neatly "complete" each page. Meta tags may also be used for other web services that analyse your pages and help with directory submissions. Rule 7)Keep Pages On subject... Your "on page" text and links must be relevant to that page. Don't wander off onto different subjects on the same page or cover more than one subject. HTML is designed for linking relevant pieces of information together, so if you want to move onto a different subject create a new page and then link to it from your current page. Of course (while not breakingrule 1!) try to use and make your keywords stand out; in the example above of holidays in Venice, you want to use the words "Holiday", "Holidays" and "Venice" as often as possible. Use them in section headers and section titles, use them as alt tags in your images. But don't go overboard, your page needs to read well and look good - just keep in mind that it needs to be very obvious what the subject is! Rule 8)The More Pages The Better... Rule 8 is very simple, and that is; all things being equal a larger site is better than a smaller one. So don't be afraid to separate things out and create as many pages as you have good content for. Rule 9) Make Sure That You Have Something to Say... When it comes down to it, there are many, many websites and the chances are that there will be many, many websites that are very similar to yours. You must create or buy or magic up good unique content, "Content Is King" is a bit of a Cliché these days, but it still makes a very good point. You must have good unique content. Part 3) Links Are Like Gold. Inbound links. __________________________________________________ __________________________ Rule 10) Spend Time On Links... Good inbound links are worth their weight in Gold, there is plenty around but they can be hard to get hold of and also expensive. You ideally need to get other associated websites to link to yours. This ranges from very easy to very hard hard to do depending on the subject are of your site. A good place to start (as markus mentioned here), is with directories. There are plenty around so use lists like those he mentioned to fine the better ones, make sure that you choose directories with some decent homepage PR (5 or more). Don't pay more than $50, and don't pay annually reccuring fees - its just not nessesary, there are plenty of one-time payment directories. Submit your site with a different title and a deifferent description to each directory, take time to get it right - thats the key, choose wisely and then make the most of each directory. Rule 11) Exchange Links... Swap links, you can email site owners and ask them to "exchange links" with you, in this case you link to them and they link back to you, this is called reciprocal linking. Its a good way to start, but don't use this technique too much, reciprocal links are often time consuming to arrange and are easy for search engines to spot - more effective reciprocal links are three-way reciprocals. In this example someone links to you and you link to a third website, this third website then completes the chain by linking to the first site (the one that links to you). Don't kill yourself trying to make these arrangements, if it's not easy then its not worth it. And whatever you do - don't send SPAM saying "Please swap links with me!" Rule 12) Speculate To Accumulate - Buy Links... Buy links; there are many link buying sites around, one of the better ones is Text-Link-Ads. Set a monthly budget and make sure that you have some effective way to track the results of your link buying, at the very least count how many referrals you get from the links, and better still count how many conversions into sales you get! Buy wisely, don't just buy whats available, wait until you find exactly waht you need, don't buy many links in one go, make a plan, and buget well. Watching carefully how your income varies with each link that you buy, and don't get impatient. It can often take months for results to start to come through, so plan long term, and budget long term. Don't buy anything that you can't sustain long term! Rule 13) Investigat Alternative Ways To Get Links... Buy reviews and other links. You can now pay for people to review and talk about your site in their blogs, check out Review Me. This has the advantage of being a one off rather than a monthly payment, but be prepared for criticism as well as praise for your new website. Rule 14) Natural Linking Structures... Vary your anchor text, and the link destination. Make sure that each and every link that you buy varies in some way. Think about what someone other than yourself may say if they were setting up the link, use this as the text part of your link and don't always link to your homepage, deep-link into your website. This is important because search engines generally try to filter out "unnatural" links, they like to focus on "natural" linking. Specifically this means links that are not "arranged", they like to rely on people who link because they like the content of what they are linking to, and not because someone (you) wants to promote it. Rule 15) And Back To Great Content... And finally; "Link Bait". Link bait is very good unique content, if your website contains something very good, very important or very interesting you will find that interested people will automatically link to it. Try to create this sort of content and people will link to it. Link baiting is perhaps the hardest work but its definitely the most effective (and cheapest!).

Good luck with your SEO and I hope that this helps a little bit.

Oh and by the way, the "rules" aren't really rules in any formal sense of the word, I have just called them that for clarity.

Once again, good luck!


EDIT: Just noticed this is my 100th post

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Hey - great post James, you certainly added to my tip!!

Not sure about Meta Tags still though...??



<edit>Congrats on the 100th Post!</edit>

Well, you could be right, but they can't do any harm, and like I say they help organise and "complete" every page, I certainly wouldn't create a site that ommited them.

Also, sites like Google and Yahoo may use the description when nothing else is available.

They are very easy things to sort out, using PHP I always fill them dynamically using information that is available for that page anyway...

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Top Tips Forum - Friendly Help and Advice
Technology, your Computer, the Environment, Money and Finance, Sports, Health and Fitness and Much More.