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Optimization: SEO Basic Techniques?

Originally Published: 2005-02-21
Updated: 2006
This articles discusses some basic SEO techniques. The word basic helps give it away that most of these are not a closely guarded secret. However, the lack of secrecy doesn't negate the perceived effectiveness.

"Can someone tell me how I can get my site to rank better?"

A common question found on most forums or discussions groups about SEO. Here is the common response to that question:

Read the guidelines or tips shared with webmasters or site owners by the search engines
Yahoo! Search, Google, and MSN plus others provide Help &-or Guidelines pages. They may be breif but some golden nuggets may be found in those pages that will help you.
Page Title
Make it short, punchy, but strong.
"Mary Elizabeth's Page About How To Make Green Widgets By Using Yellow Widgets with Blue Foo" or "Mary Elizabeth's Site: free,articles,widgets,widget,foo,blue foo,green widgets,yellow widgets, ..." is not as strong of a title for Mary Elizabeth's page as she may hope. The second one is not a very interesting or appealing one at all even though it does it list a lot of keywords.
META tags
Yes, we can all agree that the majority of search engines do not use META information as part of their algorithms (in terms of gauging placement) and have not since the late 1990's.
However, if you choose to share META tags on your page, here are some tips:
  • META charset: share this but understand it doesn't help with SEO.
  • META description: keep it short, punchy, and interesting. 1 to 3 sentences or up to 200 characters (including spaces and punctuation) is actually more than sufficient when considering how search engines, like Yahoo! Search or Google, will use these in the abstract, or snippet, on search results pages. Do not use a blanket META description across all pages within a site but individualize it to be about the page it appears on.
  • META keywords: low value, if any at all, to this with the majority of search engines. Again, if using it, keep the listing short and sweet. 10 to 16 keywords or around 180 characters (including spaces and punctuation) is probably sufficient enough for the "job" even though some sources claim you can use up to 250 to 1,000 characters. As like with META description, do not use a blanket META keywords listing across all pages but individualize it to match the keywords of the page that it appears on.
  • META robots (index,follow,noindex,nofollow): skip listing this one and use robots.txt file instead.
  • META re-visit: skip listing this one. Spiders are not very likely, given the number of pages on the Web nowadays, taking personal requests or hints about when to return and look for new contents. If you want the spiders to visit a site more often, get better links pointing to it!
  • META author: not needed for SEO so can skip trying to slip in a brief listing of keywords in this one and, if using it, limit yourself to listing the author of the page's contents.
  • META copyrights: same as META author - not needed for SEO so no reason to try to add more than what is need to it, if using one.
  • META generator: can skip sharing this as all it is essentially about what kind of HTML editor you used to create and edit the page with.
  • META refresh: if at all possible, avoid using META refresh on your pages. This was a victim of abuse and questionable misuse in late 2004 and during 2005, which has made some of the top search engines leery about this appearing on some pages.
Styles and JavaScript in the HEAD
Share these through a stylesheet and .js files instead if possible.
Validate Pages
Debate about validation set to one side, you want to remove or correct any errors that may hinder a search engine's spider from going through the pages.
Submitting to Search Engines
Not necessary. If your site has essentially zero links pointing to it then even manual submission will not help your site or its ranking. Spiders follow links and if you get some links pointing to your site then the spiders will find your pages and index them.
If you want to submit your site somewhere, then submit to directories. DMOZ is one place you can submit your site to (while bearing in mind it can take several weeks on up to 2 or more years before yoru site will be reveiwed for possible inclusion). Do a serch query for SEO-friendly directories to help get an idea of what kind of linking methods, used on sites or within directories, you want to seek out.
[Google] Build Up The PR value
PR 3 status can be achieved with just a handful, or less, of good Inbound links. From there you want to get it up to PR 4 or 5 - or middle-of-the-road status.
On-Site Touches
Use of Headings, Keyword Density and Placement, optimal anchor text, etc. If you can use text instead of images to relay content and information, then use text instead of images. [e. g. - if using menu buttons, for the nagivation, that is arial text saying "home" "order" and such - consider using text instead and slipping in a keyword or two for the anchor text.]
Off-site Touches:
Optimal anchor text used on Inbound Links, getting Inbound Links, etc.
alt"" or alt text
Use keyword rich but informative alt text if and when the image is important to the page (in relation to the contents). If the image is only decorative (e. g. divider bar image) or used for spacing (e. g. transparent 1 x 1 image file), then use an empty alt="" as recommended.

The above will help provide a starting point of what you can do to help better or optimize your site's contents.


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