So, from the beginning, what exactly is SEO/ search engine
optimisation?
Well, SEO is (as i'm sure you know) the acronym for Search
Engine Optimization. Three words which are perhaps fairly
self explanatory, however how to actually carry out the
optimisation to your website is a different matter. To get you started I have
created my top 10 tips to SEO
My top 10 SEO Search engine optimisation tips
1. CONTENT- Despite what anybody says content is the
KING.
If a website has good content it will be much, much more
likely to attract visitors, it stands to reason, people will
visit your site if they can get what they want, they may
even come back time and time again! Before you start to
optimise your website you must first ask yourself the
question. ‘Does my website actually have quality content?’
If the answer to this in ‘no’ then stop reading this now,
you would be wasting your time to continue trying to
optimise a site which has no purpose. If your site does have
good, useful and original content then it is definitely
worth spending time to optimise it.
A great way of becoming popular with search engines and
visitors alike is to keep updating your website with new,
fresh and original content! This will keep the Google bot
crawling your site on a regular basis.
2.
Text- Make sure your site has lots of it! Graphics
are good for your visitors however ‘bots’ such as the
‘Google bot’ cannot read graphics and without pleasing the
‘Google bot’ you will not get search engine traffic. Make
sure that your website therefore contains loads of text! At
least 150 words per page!
3. Keywords- The Google search engine relies heavily upon
keywords, thus making it important for you, the webmaster to
include your keywords lots and lots of times throughout your
site. It would be wise to include your keywords at least
5-10 times every 100 words if possible. Remember to keep
your text sounding natural though, otherwise your visitors
will not enjoy reading it.
A word of advice- adding keywords to your website is
important and sometimes difficult. However, do not be
tempted to add 'invisible keywords' (setting keyword font
colour so it does not appear against page background). This
technique is known as keyword stuffing.
Read more about keyword
stuffing here
4. Meta Tags- It is worth your while to include Meta
Tags on your website, you will find that most good web
design software will have the option to insert keyword and
Meta description tags into your site. Some search engines
rely heavily upon these Meta tags for their rankings- It is
understood that Google does not attach much importance to
Meta keyword tags, however other search engines do!
5. Title tags- Make sure that your website makes use
of title tags. A title tag should include keywords for the
webpage that it links to; search engines value the keywords
in title tags highly. Make sure that you choose keywords
which are relevant to the webpage which you are linking to.
If the page which you are linking to is for example,
www.2create-a-money-making-website.com don’t make your link title
2create-a-money-making-website
Make it something like, 2create-a-money-making-website! Advice for webmasters
on search engine optimisation and website creation. Title
tags are a key part of search engine optimisation. They are
also important for your human visitors.
In case you do not know how to create a link with text like
the two I have shown above, the HTML code is: < A
HREF="http://www.insert web address.com">Insert description
(with no space between the '< A' at the beginning of the
code)
6. Link popularity- Basically this is the amount of
websites which link to your site. Search engines have a
thing called Page rank, (this is what you will be increasing
by carrying out search engine optimisation) In a paragraph, Page rank is the method
which search engines, notably Google use in order to
determine the ranking of a site, and thus it’s position on
the search engine results page. The higher the amount of
quality links leading to a page the higher it will be
ranked. Remember, quality is king, hundreds of links from
insignificant websites will probably get you less success
than one link from a significant PR 5 or more site.
Remember, search the web for your keywords, and ask if you
can participate in link exchange with high PR site (3+)
which are themed on YOUR website’s topic. This process WILL
be worth your while in terms of upping your chances of
getting in the top search results. After all thats what
search engine optimisation is about!
7. Structure- This sounds obvious, however, make sure
that all of the links to all of your pages work. Furthermore
ensure that all of your pages link to your home page. If you
are using fancy methods of web design such as flash then be
sure that you include text links at the bottom of each page
to lead on to other pages. (Search engine bots will be able
to read the text links but probably not the flash). Also,
create a site map; this can be as basic as a page full of
links to all the other pages on your site. It is however
useful to write a short description under each link. This
site map should then be linked to from your homepage. It
will help search engine’s bots to discover all of your
website’s pages! You should make sure the structure of your
website is good in the early stages of search engine
optimisation
8. Submission to directories- submit your site to a
few large directories such as the DMOZ open directory.
Submit your site to Yahoo’s index and Google’s index. You
could submit your site to many other online directories
however if you do this can be time consuming. Be sure to
only bother submitting to directories which have PR 3 or
above. Using Google’s toolbar is a good way of easily
viewing a pages Page rank.
Click here to learn more about Google Page rank
9. Write blogs or articles which include links to your
website- This is a great way of linking to your website
from content which is relevant. Search engines and viewers
alike love to read a good article with original content.
Remember to follow the instructions I gave in ‘Tip 6’ in
order to create a good link title with relevant key words
for the site which you are linking to. Remember getting good
quality links to your website is an important part of search
engine optimisation.
10. Submit comments on websites which are relevant to
your topic- make sure that you include a link to your
website. This is a good way of increasing your page rank by
getting a relevant link to your site. It is also a good way
of attracting actual visitors who also read through the
comments. Unfortunately some sites do not allow the
insertion of links, but keep looking! You WILL FIND the ones
that do!
So there you have it! My top 10 tips. Remember, be
patient, any changes in Google’s search engine rankings take
time! As I always say, if you have a site with good quality
content you will eventually get traffic!
Search engine
optimisation
