published by Dan in SEO Basics
- Make content accessible to search engine spiders - Make sure all content that you want to be searchable can be found by search engines. Remember that certain formats like Flash pages and Java script drop down menus can not be crawled by search engines. Do not forget to provide a way for search engines to know the content of those pages/elements.
- Make sure your site’s server is clean - This is very important for those using shared servers. If you happen to be sharing a proxy server with a banned/flagged site this could affect your ranking.
- Provide fresh content - Sites that rarely update their content can do this by publishing RSS/News feeds or by adding a blog. The blog need not be updated daily but posting a couple of times or a bit more per week is recommended.
- Settle canonicalisation issues - Figure out which URL you want to be the primary URL (with www. or without the www) and 301 redirect the other URL to the primary URL.
- Look at your SERPs standing and not on page rank - While a higher page rank should make you happy the true test of whether your SEO efforts is paying off or not is your placement in SERPs for the keywords you are targeting. A high page rank does help but there are lots of instances wherein pages with a lower page rank out do ones with higher page ranks in SERPs.
to be continued…
Popularity: 31% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Basics
- Incorporate your SEO campaign into your overall website strategy - See previous post on reasons for SEO.
- Do exhaustive keyword research before selecting keywords to optimise for - A cursory keyword research will still get you results but you can almost be sure that you’ll either miss some very important keywords that will result in higher conversion rates or that you’ll end up optimising for some keywords that will not yield that much results. Either way it will result in wasted resources.
- Make sure you provide quality content - Content is and always will be king. There’s no point optimising for a site that doesn’t have something of real value to offer. When it comes to keywords in the site’s text make sure that they can be found there and that variations of the keywords/phrases pepper the pages. However, make sure that the content still sounds natural and that the content doesn’t look spammy. Keyword stuffing is a big no since it makes for substandard content.
- Keyword placement - I’ve posted on this several times. Make sure keywords are placed where it counts (title tags, anchor texts, ALT tags, etc.).
- Focus on link building - Get as much relevant links as possible. Non-relevant links are okay as long as they’re not from link spammers and as long as you get more relevant links than non-relevant ones.
to be continued…
Popularity: 33% [?]
published by Dan in SEO | SEO Basics
- SEO does not guarantee results overnight - Patience is one of the virtues SEOs must develop!
- SEO will get you the traffic but won’t guarantee conversions - You still need good content and a good website design to convince the traffic sent by search engines to take the action you want them to.
- SEO is hinged on keyword selection - If you want a successful SEO campaign you need to make sure that you select the most important/relevant keywords/ke phrases to target.
- SEO is a continuous effort - Search engines are very dynamic. To keep up with the changes in search engine algorithms you should make sure that you keep an eye on your site’s optimisation efforts. SEO is definitely NOT a one-time thing. You also need to regularly look at your keywords to see if you should be targeting new ones.
- SEO starts with website debugging - Time and again I have emphasised the importance of checking bugs, both critical and trivial, before doing SEO. You can not optimise a broken site!
- SEO service providers are not equal - Make sure you hire the services of a good/experienced SEO service provider if you want to get real results. Stay away from SEOs that promise results overnight. Chances are they will employ black hat tactics to show you “results”, which in the end will endanger more than benefit your website.
Popularity: 34% [?]
published by Dan in SEO | SEO Basics
I firmly believe that every now and then it is important that we review SEO basics to make sure that we do not neglect anything. The good thing about reviewing SEO basics is that you get to check whether you are losing sight of the reason why you are doing SEO.
- To get traffic from search engines - The primary purpose of SEO is NOT to be number in SERPs but to get as much traffic as from search engines as possible! This distinction is important because though you might rank better than before your SEO efforts still can’t be considered a success if you don’t reach the number of traffic you need/want from search engines.
- To get interested visitors from search engines - This pertains to relevance. You want the traffic you get to be interested in the content of your website. If you get a very high bounce rate then you need to take a close look at your keywords and start targeting search terms that are more relevant to your site’s actual content.
These are the two most basic reasons for SEO, however, if you look at the bigger picture you will see that even the above reasons exist to support the primary goal of your site (market your products online, educate people about your field, etc.). Hence, always remember that SEO is just a tool to help you reach your website’s aim. If you want to do effective SEO then do not lose sight of your goals.
Popularity: 33% [?]
0845 838 7448 
