1. The number one optimization technique is to create
useful and relevant content on your pages for your visitors.
This is extremely vital to your success. It should be always
be your first thought when you are creating pages for your
site.
2. Choose your keyword search terms (use our Top
Keywords tool) so that they reflect the "theme of your"
site and the business market you wish to target.
However, don't go crazy using hundreds of keywords. This
will kill your ranking; not help it. Limit your keywords
to only 5 to 10.
3. Use your chosen keywords throughout your web
page, not just in the meta tags. Most importantly, use your
keywords or key phrase(s) as close to the top of the you
pages as possible, within the first 600 characters.
4. Your meta title tags should include your most
important keyword phrase or keyword at least once and keep
the entire title tag to 60 characters or less.
5. Use your keywords or phrase in your heading tags
(H1, H2, H3 etc.) as well to increase the relevance for
that keyword phrase on your page.
6. Be sure to use the "alt" image tag
for all the graphics on your pages. Use your keyword phrases
in these tags as well.
7. Never try to hide or "stuff" your keyword
text by making it the same color as the background color
of your page. Many search engines consider this spamming
and will dump your site.
8. Set up your own domain name. Do not host your
site on a free web hosting service or on a shared domain
name. If you do, the search engines will consider your site
"unimportant" and possibly ignore it. Plus, it
also shows a lack of professionalism on your part and will
hurt your sales - if you are a sales orientated site.
9. With domain names so inexpensive these days ($7.95
at goDaddy.com for example) you can afford to buy variations
and misspellings of your domain name to prevent others from
capitalizing on your web site's success, and to help capture
traffic from those knuckleheads out there who can't spell!
10. Using your keyword phrase in your domain name
can actually help boost rankings in the search engines.
Using dashes (---) in your domain may also help you rank
higher for your chosen keywords. Just be sure to link these
sort of domains to your main site.
11. Name your web pages with the primary keyword
phrase chosen for that particular web page. For example
if your site is about "Dogs" you might have a
page titled "Dog_grooming.htm if the term "dog
grooming" was one of your chosen keyword phrases.
12. Do not bury your site pages in a long vertical
directory structure. Keep all your site pages at the top
level or at most one level down.
I.E: Your URLs should look like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/dog_grooming.htm
or
http://www.yourdomain.com/dogs/dog_grooming.htm
and definitely NOT
http://www.yourdomain.com/dogs/kansas/topeka/dog_grooming.htm
13. If you are starting a new web business, include
your keyword phrase as part of the name of your business
if you can. This will help both for "branding"
purposes and make it easier for your site to be found on
the web.
Now a lot of people say, "oh yeah, what about ebay
or amazon? Their names have nothing to do with the business
that they are in.
To that I have to say that both these companies and many
more like them have MILLIONS & MILLIONS of dollars to
spend in order to create "brand awareness." Do
you?
14. Create a professional looking web site. Your
site is your storefront and reflects your business image.
An attractive site builds credibility and trust with your
visitors. Hire a good web designer rather then doing it
yourself if you have no experience. Just don't let the designer
go crazy with too many graphics.
15. ALWAYS test your site to be sure that it displays
correctly in IE, Netscape and on the Mac. You'd be shocked
at how the different browsers interpret html and can ruin
your page design. To make sure your html code is good you
should test it here: http://validator.w3.org/check
16. Also you should build your site to the viewing
specification of 800X600. No one uses the 640X 480 anymore.
17. ALWAYS test your site for broken links BEFORE
submitting to the engines. Use the site link checker here
at Search Engine Promotion Tools.Com or the link checker
in your html program.
18. Have a friend proofread your site for typos,
spelling and grammatical errors.
19. Include a button or text link back to your home
page on every page at your site. But DO NOT name it "home.html"!
Give your home page link a name that uses your most popular
keyword.
20. The first page of your site should be fast loading,
10 seconds at most if you can pull it off. Search engines
cannot index graphics full of words. Only words in text
will be indexed and ranked by the engines.
21. Though we sometimes break this rule on our own
site, you should avoid using flash and all graphics home
pages.
22. Use a common navigational menu for all the pages
at your site. Name each link on your site using one of your
sites keywords. Search engine spiders give more weight to
links that have keywords in them.
23. Encourage other web sites to trade links with
your site. Web sites linking to your site can increase your
site's link popularity and thus push up its rankings in
the search engines. We
use and recommend this service for our linking campaign.
24. Google considers any type of cloaking (creating
artificial site pages for the sole purpose of gaining higher
search engine rankings) to be spam. Don't do it. You may
not get caught, but if you do you can say goodbye to that
domain as it will be blacklisted.
25. Create a site map for your web site. This allows
both visitors and search engines to see all the pages at
your site. See an
example here.
26. Place style sheet and java script code in an
external file and NOT on your actual web page. The less
code that precedes the main body text of your page containing
your keyword phrases the better.
Now speaking of Google:
Here's a GREAT ebook
on a Search Engine Strategy that could put your
website at #1!
Best of luck, and see you at the top!
Don Schnure
thieptraitim.com
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