SEO – Top 10 Tips To Get It Right
SEO is a constantly changing art. You just cannot get away with it without keeping a tab on how the top search engines are changing their algorithms and treating websites and links. Still, there are certain things that are still the same and they are core to how websites interact with search engines and vice-versa. So here are 10 tips to get it right.
1. Keyword Research Before All Else – If you are starting a website, you must’ve already decided on a niche to work with. Now it is time for very careful keyword research. These have to be keywords that are frequently searched but have relatively lower competition, i.e., low hanging fruits. You can then move on to the others.
2. Use your keywords right – Once you have your keywords and key phrases, it is time to remember to use them properly. Use them in the title tag, the h1 and h2 headings, in the link texts within your web content, in the link texts from other websites, in the page url and even in the ‘alt’ parameter of the img tag. The basic idea is to integrate them into the meta structure of the site.
3. Description and Keyword Tags – These are still pretty important, so use them well. The description tag should have a tight, short and informative summary of your website. Most search engines now ignore the ‘Keywords’ tag but it is useful sometimes, so put it in anyway. Include these two in every main page that you have to maximize impact.
4. Make Your Website SEO Friendly – Make sure that your website encourages search engines to go into every nook and cranny and see how much content there is. Get all your important pages to link to each other. A very simple way to do this is how most sites do it – through a consistent navigation menu that links to the various main sections of the website. Have menus and sub-menus in a nice layout that is user-friendly. Having site map will help your cause too. And all of this will help your visitor have an easier time going through your website.
5. Come up with great content – A good website always has good content. If you are doing everything else and still using bad content, you are doomed to being ignored by search engines and your target audience. Make your content as useful and as relevant as possible. Relevance will attract search engines and usefulness will keep your audience coming back and sharing your URL with others. But you can’t keep the same content for too long. Once it gets stale (the actual time depends on your niche), it is time to pump in fresh content.
6. Avoid Duplicate Content – Don’t republish content from other sites all too often. Search engines are hungry for original content and absolutely despise duplication. So track duplicate content down and change them. If you have print-friendly versions of your page, exclude them from indexing with the robots.txt file. Make sure you do not have multiple URLs for the same page due to elements like ‘session id’ your URL. Do not display your website on multiple domains. Use a ‘301 redirect’ instead to point visitors and search bots to one domain. If you have similar product descriptions, try and change them too.
7. Start the link building – Once you have taken care of things related to your website, it is time to look at other websites to get some links pointing at your general direction. Inbound links from outside places with good reputation makes search engines take your website more seriously. There are many ways to do this but good content is usually a surefire way to get others to link back to you without you asking or requesting them. Networking with other webmasters will also help you get links from their websites. Get into the habit of exchanging links with other webmasters in related niches. And then there’s viral marketing, (online) social marketing and outright purchase of links.
8. Get Into Analyzing Everything – It is now time to get back to your website and look at the numbers. There are several website tracking tools available from places like Google and Yahoo. See which one you like the best and use it. Look at things like bounce rate, most popular pages, demographics, geolocation data, etc. Find out whether you are reaching your target audience or not. See if you have a new audience segment that is worth exploring into. In simple words – see where the money and popularity are and target those areas.
9. Stay Up To Date – Like I said in the beginning, SEO is a constantly changing scene. You absolutely must keep track of what’s happening in the scene. Read SEO blogs. Engage other webmasters in friendly chatter on SEO forums. Find out what’s working and what’s not. Sharing knowledge will always help you gather more of it. So be nice, share and listen to what others have to say. Have an open mind and don’t be scared of doing a little experimentation every now and then. If you never fail at anything, you will never learn anything either – wise man have always said.
10. Don’t go Black Hat – That means anything unethical, illegal and downright nasty. You might read about a lot of secret techniques and some might sound very cool to you. But practicing them is a very bad idea. These are usually centered on exploiting security holes, algorithm glitches and so on. So they might give you a big spike for short while but when they fall, they can take you down with them. Your website might get permanently blacklisted by one or more search engines for being unethical. Also, if you do not exactly understand what you are doing, you might actually be making your website vulnerable to security threats and hacks.
If you are doing this entire list well, you should be seeing results pretty soon. If not, go through the whole list and see if you missed out on anything or did something wrong.
Submitex.com provides Smart, Innovative SEO Services that help you get top rankings on major search engines. Our aim is to provide you with quality SEO link building services leading to great results. We work with our clients to ensure that they are satisfied with what they have got.
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