Tips for Search Engine Optimization
Follow the rules.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is still a scary thing for most people. If you do it well, your site can quickly obtain high rankings AND significantly better/more qualified traffic. If, however, you do it poorly, you’ll likely be wasting your precious resources (both time and money). Furthermore, if you perform search engine optimization and try to trick your way to the top, your site may be banned. Therefore, it is critical you don’t try to fool the search engines but rather instead take an organic approach to your optimization efforts.
Our top five tips.
Below is a list of the top five legitimate things you can do today for better natural placement in the search engines tomorrow:
1) Have a Theme – What is your site all about? Every site needs to have a theme and every page of your site needs to be optimized for keywords that relate to that theme.
2) Content is Key – It is critical that your site have content that relates directly to your theme. Have keywords but do not stuff your content with them. Instead, make sure you use your keywords only a few times per page. Eventually, through latent semantic indexing, the search engines will be able to read the theme of your pages by associating certain terms with concepts when indexing your web pages. Until that day, however, keywords still rule – so use them.
3) Meta Tags – Your title tags are critical to your success. So make sure you have them and that you use your keywords in them. BUT please keep it simple – the more you put in your tags, the less effective the result.
4) Design Issues – The way your site was built definitely does matter – so make sure you work with a team of designers that have a strong track record in building sites that get high rankings. Also, stay completely away from sites built entirely in Flash or in Frames.
5) Development Issues – Dynamic sites, historically, have had a difficult time with the search engines. Make sure your team develops a site that makes it easy for the search bots to crawl around your site efficiently. Also, make sure your site has XML Sitemap and Robot.txt files.
A final thought.
While following these recommended tips, your site will be much better positioned for long-term rankings in the search engines. However, please keep in mind that many of the search engines these days, especially Google, factor in several “off the page criteria.” Google considers factors like the number of inbound links to your site, the age of your site, and click through behavior, into their algorithm. It is important to note that optimization is no longer just about bringing people to your site but rather, it is about having a site that people get value from, as judged by items such as your inbound links and visitor click through activity. If your site does not deliver value, consider designing a new site that can.
Ron Weber is currently the President of SD Interactive, a San Diego Internet Marketing Agency.
