Search Engine Optimisation is a science that takes many years to learn and master, additionally the technology involved is continually developing and changing. Therefore, it isn’t something that everyone can do however, there are certainly a few things you can do to help get your website ranked higher in Search Engines.
With online presence becoming increasingly competitive it is vitally important to get your website highly ranked. The top ten tips below from Adam Price, MD of SEO Sitebuilder.com outline the key factors you should examine closely to ensure an effective online presence.
1. Content is King!
It is in the search engines best interests to highly rank websites that people will actually like and gain benefit from. Therefore you need to ensure that your website provides valid information for the visitors. Generally a 5 page website would not be classed as an information resource and the search engines will be looking for more, so make sure you provide enough content to make it worth while for people to visit.
2. Keep on topic!
If you are selling garden furniture on your website keep on this theme – the easiest way to remember it is – ‘1 website – 1 theme, 1 page – 1 topic’ Don’t try to promote all your different businesses on one website. This will dilute the power of your keyphrases and content.
3. Don’t try to fool them!
The search engines are becoming extremely intelligent and are fully aware of all the rogue techniques that can be used to try and fool them. You need to avoid using hidden text as if the search engines spot any trickery you will be marked down and sometimes even blacklisted.
4. Choose an SEO partner wisely!
I’m afraid to say but there are many ‘cowboys’ in this industry that will try to convince you that they know what they are doing when really they don’t have a clue. The best way check SEO companies is to ask to see results… what have they done for other companies? Can they prove what they say they can do? Here’s a tip, make sure they tell you what domain you should find BEFORE they show you any results!
5. Search Engine friendly design
Stay away from using ‘Flash’ navigation, in fact avoid creating your entire site in flash. This is because flash makes its impossible for the spiders that the search engines send out to find out what your site is about. Many web development companies are still using tables to layout a website. This is an old technique now and is not search engine friendly.
You should have your website developed using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Try and avoid Javascript Navigation. Although these can be used to produce attractive fly out menus with lovely rollovers and colours which look very nice on your website, the trouble is that the spiders can’t understand the content within Javascript. As this is where all your page links are, you need to avoid Javascript in order to be found.
6. Back Links
Getting other people to link to your website is fantastic but bear in mind, they have to be relevant. The Search Engines will be able to recognise if the links are irrelevant and can take a view that you maybe using some form of link farm service which is frowned upon.
7. Duplicate Content
Make sure that you do not have the same content on any of your pages within your website or even the same as another website. This is frowned upon by the search engines and can even result in your website being moved to what’s call the supplemental listings, which essentially is a secondary database.
8. Site Maps
Site Maps are a fantastic way for spiders to be able to collect as much information about your website as possible. Provide a Google site map as this will be directly related to Google’s own specification.
9. Alt Tags & Title Tags
These are a fantastic way to get more valid information about your website in to the search engines. Alt Tags are the little tool tips of text that appear when you hover your mouse pointer over an image. The Title Tag will be the little tool tips of text that appear when you hover your mouse pointer over any text links on the page.
10. Bullet Points!
Use bullet points to emphasise selected pieces of text. However don’t use them without providing supporting information otherwise this could be seen as key word stuffing.
You can use the SEO tips above to try and improve your rankings but you must bear in mind the way your website has been developed. Just imagine you are building a house, if you don’t get the foundations right at the beginning it doesn’t matter what you put in to it, it could still be unsafe and not built correctly.
Source:http://www.bytestart.co.uk/content/promotion/7_6/top-ten-seo-tips.shtml
Sunday, June 8, 2008
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