General SEO Basics

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a proven way to improve the number of targeted visitors to your web site through the natural process of finding your web site on the Internet through the search engines. There is some difference of opinion among the experts as to what is acceptable and what is not, but the search engines are clear on what they will accept and what they will not accept.

The search engines are clear that they will accept anything that provides relevant content to the searcher and the search engine. There is no doubt that a well-designed web site with relevant, unique, and fresh content will rank well against its peers. As your web site gains relevant links, both inbound and outbound, it will rank even higher.

Ranking well with the search engines is a science. As such, it follows a well-established formula. With the appropriate amount of time and effort, any web site can rank well. If the web site owner does not want to invest the time, they can hire someone to do the work for them. Whether hired, or designed by yourself, there are some things that will make your web site rank high with the search engines.

Content Must be Relevant

First and foremost, search engines look for relevant content. This is the single most important aspect of a high ranking web site. Having a web site that is well designed is wonderful, but it will not help with ranking. Good content is content that is grammatically correct as well as free of spelling and factual errors. As important as the grammar, spelling, and facts are in your content, never lose sight of the fact that your content should be unique. “Borrowing” content is illegal as well as unethical.

Not only should your content be factual and original, it should also be fresh, which means it must be updated regularly. Search engines are drawn to fresh content the way children are drawn to cookies. Not only are the search engines drawn to it, but so are your visitors and in many cases with money in hand ready to be spent.

Design Elements That Matter

You might consider adding a glossary or similar feature to your web site, to include words that are commonly misspelled, that have multiple spellings, or that might be spelled differently in different languages. This is especially important when you consider the differences between British English to American English.

Write simple, descriptive page titles that include your keyword or keyword phrase for specific pages. This makes pages easier for both human and robot visitors. This page title is what will be linked to from the search engine results page as well so you want to make sure it says it all in the least amount of words possible. Make sure that each page has its own title, even if you include some basic elements commonly. One example of this could be keyword, company name, or even keyword, section name, and company name.

Break up your text with headings. This makes it easier for visitors to scan your text, but it also makes it easier for the search engines as well. Make your headings relevant and use the correct text size for the headings. Search engines look for h1 through h6 elements for headings, and it is commonly believed that the substitution of graphics simply does not work the same even if you utilize the “alt” tags.

When your content includes images, follow the law and help yourself as well. U.S. law says that you must use “alt” tags. This allows the handicapped visitor to access your site and know what the image is; it also allows you to descriptively describe what the image is to portray to your visitor. The “alt” tag is an ideal place to insert keywords if it is appropriate.

Choose your page titles carefully. Avoid the use of dynamically generated page titles. These make it hard for the search engine robots to crawl your site. In fact, since these titles often include a “?” or question mark, they may even stop the search engine robot. Rather than this use static relevant titles, this will result in higher rankings as well as happier human visitors.

Build a quality links system. Not only do quality links help with your page rankings, they will also get you listed faster in some cases. Search engines crawl much like a spider does and, as such, they constantly follow links from other web sites. The trick is to make sure they are relevant links, links from so-called link farms will not help a great deal as the search engines will not count them. They are looking for links from web sites that rank well on their own as well as being complimentary to your web site.

When building your web site, use code that is clean and up to the industry standards. Code that is broken stops the search engines from crawling your web site correctly and will cause you to rank much lower as the search engines will not have all of your content in their indexes. Additionally, code that is incorrect or broken will cause some of your visitors to not see all of your information, or for it to be displayed incorrectly so that it cannot be ready by the human visitor either.

Also consider, when building your web site, that you must, as required by law, make your web site accessible to the disabled. This is not something that will hurt you as it makes your web site easy to navigate, and that helps you in the “eyes” of the search engine.

Java scripts and Flash elements are wonderful additions to your web site, but they should not be allowed to contain your content or impede access to your content. If the content is contained within Java script or Flash, the search engines cannot read it.

One other thing to be careful of when building your web site is frames. While it’s possible to provide a work-around for the search engines to crawl your web site, that does not completely solve the frames issue. Search engines display page results. When a searcher clicks on the link for a page using a frames layout they encounter an orphaned page as they will not be entering the site the “normal” way - at the index page, hence, your visitors will be without the important parts of the web site, such as the navigation system etc. Note that many templates are built using the frames model so, if possible, don’t use templates.

The last step to preparing your page correctly is to add your meta tags. Now, know that the jury is out on these. Some SEO experts say they are not worth your time while others will tell you they are the most important part. Even if you take the middle of that road, you want to ensure that the title tag, the keyword tag, and the description tag are present and contain your keyword for that page. Some search engines actually use them, if for no other reason than to pull the description and title for your page.

When considering your title tag, you should include the title of that page, and make it unique to fit the content. The description tag should also contain your keyword, but it should also describe the page. It should be a relatively short description, containing about 120 characters. Your keyword tag is the most important of the tags, save the title tag. The keyword tag is also the most abused of the meta tags. It should contain only keywords for that page and each of the keywords or keyword phrases should be repeated only once in this tag.

Submit Your Web Site To Directories and Search Engines

With these things done, you are ready to submit your web site to the search engines and the directories. Now, here is another place where the road splits. Again, take the middle and submit at least to Google, the Open Directory Project, or DMOZ, and Yahoo. You, of course, can submit to other search engines and directories, but the jury is out on the benefits. This is a case where less can be more but more does not hurt. Nevertheless, the two above-mentioned directories and Google will get you a head start on getting your web site listed where it needs to be. With directory submission, the trick is to be patient. It often takes several weeks before your web site is listed.

Beware of Bad Advice

Be careful of taking advice from anyone who advises the use of questionable tactics. Things like cloaking - showing the search engines one version of the page and showing human visitors something different - keyword stuffing, and “alt” text spamming will work for a short time. When the search engines catch it, which they will, your web site will likely be banned completely. If you question the ethical use of a technique, avoid it. It is always better to be honest with the search engines.

Follow the Formula and You’ll Will Do Well

If this formula is followed, any web site can rank well with the search engines. If the web site owner chooses not to do the work by themselves, he should ensure that the company he hires follows the same formula. Deviation from the established formulas can and has resulted with the banning of web sites from the search engine indexes.

Search engines are looking for a few very specific things. These include fresh, relevant content, relevant links and, accessibility. By providing these things, the search engines will rank your web site well and your human visitors will enjoy the visit and return to your web site many times.