Search Engine Optimization Tips & Tricks
I’d like to start out this article by telling you
that I have experience in Search Engine ranking technologies dating back to
before Google was even a day dream in Sergey Brin’s tiny little mind. If you are
looking for true Search Engine Optimization experts, look to those who dealt in
the early days with Yahoo before they charged $199 to get your site listed in
their directory, Altavista (Pre-Babelfish) and MetaCrawler to name a few. I will
start in order of what I believe is most important in Search Engine
Optimization.
1. TITLE Tags. Imagine yourself in the
library, what’s a library right? Well we’ve all sat at those old skool Pentium
II or Pentium III computers searching the directory by typing in keywords
related to the subject of the book
results, you jotted them down on those tiny pieces of paper smaller than a Post
It note with a little pencil you could barely get a grip and off you went
searching for the title that seemed most relevant to what you were looking for.
TITLE tags, the information between the TITLE tags on a website are
just as important as the title of the book you were searching for at the library
back in the 80’s. The TITLE tag best describes what each page’s content is about
and helps the search engine spider to index that page correctly. Whatever is in
your TITLE tag should match the content of what is on the actual page itself.
2. META Tags. A lot of search engines
these days don’t use META tags anymore, but they can still be helpful.
Especially the robots.txt file which you will need to create a tag for to let
the spider know where on your server it is created. This should be in your
server’s root or home directory.
3. H1,H2, H3 Tags. Every HTML page should
feature at least a H1 tag which should be used to highlight the subject of that
page. For example, if my Title Tag was “Cleveland Website Design Service” an
appropriate H1 tag for the subject or heading of that page would be “Website
Design Services.” The geographical reference is just an example, this works just
the same for any other subject. H1 Tags appear before H2, H3, H4, up to H5. This
gives a hierarchy of the page for the search engine spiders to index your page
more efficiently.
4. Reciprocal Links. I know, I know you
have heard this a hundred times that you should take time and put forth effort
in establishing reciprocal links between your site and other websites that are
based on the same subject as yours and you are still asking yourself, “If I own
a website development company, why would I go trade links with my competition??”
The answer: You don’t. When I say it’s important to establish reciprocal links
with other relevant sites, it doesn’t mean that you should approach your
competition to trade links. It means find other sites that talk about the types
of products or services your site sells. I’ve personally noticed and factually
know that Google takes links pointing to your site as a high importance maybe
even more important than META Tags. This is because it is easy to flood a
website with keywords to boost your rankings, but it is considerably more
difficult to establish your website as a reliable source of information. You
trade links with other websites because Google will begin to recognize your
website as a reliable source, thus pushing your listing to the top. Don’t expect
this to happen overnight. If you are serious about making money, generating
leads or closing sales from your website then expect to put forth effort in
establishing reciprocal links. Go ahead, do yourself a favor.
5. Keyword Density. Keyword density refers
to the denseness of keywords in the text copy on each of your web pages. I have
noticed many business website owners talking about how long they have been in
business, how many clients or projects they have developed and how important
they are, but they are missing one key thing. KEYWORDS! It’s Ok to have copy
that is dense with keywords that borderline doesn’t make sense to everyone. Not
everyone is going to come to your website and read every single word on the
page. After all, how do you browse the net? I know that when I browse I look for
something that catches my attention, maybe a product I’m looking for, a phone
number or address or maybe a contact form. If I’m at a particular website that I
searched for I already know what I’m looking for and probably don’t need to read
their introduction paragraphs, which is a great place for keywords because
search engines will give more importance to keywords that are placed higher on a
page.
6. Sitemaps. Sitemaps have become
important in the past few years because it tells search engines about all of the
pages on your site. This will help the search engine spider thoroughly index all
of the pages on your site. If you do not want certain pages to be indexed, but
still wish to display that page in your Sitemap you may exclude the page in your
robots.txt file. I very rarely use a website’s sitemap unless I feel I have
searched every square inch of the site and have no other place to look for
information. In my experiences, I have noticed that older men tend to use
sitemaps more.
7. Age of a website. I read an article
recently about how Google puts importance on the age of your website. The age is
not calculated by how old your domain name is, rather how long ago the
information on that particular domain was published. It is a good idea to
publish your content in a timely manner, but even more so important to keep that
content fresh and up to date. I can’t stand when I visit a website, read some
information then realize that it was published 4 years ago and is completely out
of date.
This list goes on and on this certainly isn’t all
of the Search Engine Optimization tricks out there, but I feel this is the most
important items that have personally helped out my rankings. I hope this
information helps give your Search Engine Optimization a head start so you can
one up your competitors. Don’t forget that it’s Ok to get into a particular
niche and that you don’t have to target the broadest keywords. Considering the
size of the internet today and what it was 10 years ago, you will have plenty of
visitors coming in from even more refined and longer keywords.
Copyright 2007 Article Authored by Matt McWilliam.
Cleveland Web Design, Cleveland Website Design and Cleveland E-Commerce Website design service by Matt McWilliam.
Matt McWilliam is the successful entrepreneur and owner of MJM Design located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Read more about Matt McWilliam at: http://www.MattMcWilliam.com
Visit http://www.ClevelandWebsiteDesign.com for all your website design & development needs. Request a Free Quote and receive a complimentary consultation from Matt McWilliam himself.
Tags: altavista, google, metacrawler, seo, tips and tricks, yahoo directory
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