1- condition you very should
make use of Java script jump down menus, image maps or image links, be there positive
to plant text links anywhere on the page for the spiders to follow.
2- Content is king, so be
certain to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your main
keyword or keyword saying.
3- If content is king, next
links are sovereign Build a network of quality back links 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
Page Rank. 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.
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.
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