How to Optimize your Website – Organic SEO Tips #1
Everyone wants to be #1 on Google, #1 on Yahoo and #1 on MSN. Years ago when the internet started to become popular and search engines were not as clever as they are now, getting to No. 1 for lets say the search term SEO on a search engine was easy. You did this…
<meta name="keywords" content="SEO, SEO, SEO, SEO Optimisation, SEO Tips, SEO Advice, SEO tricks, SEO, SEO" />
… basically you crammed the keywords into your website and you got good listings on search engines. Sometimes the keywords might go on for 1,000 characters or more – This is Keyword Stuffing! These days, if you spam keywords (also called keyword stuffing), you can expect a backlash – your site will either be banned or be penalised. Here are 5 primary tips on how you can improve your websites search engine positioning;
- Update your website regularly – regular website updates ensure that your content is always fresh and also shows the search engines that this content is being maintained. You will find that sites which are updated more regularly get visited more by the spiders.
- Write Original Content – NEVER, copy content from another website. Always write your own content as Google does not like duplicated content. Write the content with the customer or website visitor in mind. Also when naming your website files, don’t call the pages page1.html, page2.html – if it is a page for SEO Tips and Advice, then call the page good-SEO-tips.html so if your website is www.shanes-seo-tips.com your page will be at www.shanes-seo-tips.com/good-SEO-tips.html and not www.shanes-seo-tips.com/page2.html – as this can hel your SEO also.
- Include Good Meta data – On each page have a unique TITLE, DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS. The content of these meta tags should identify the content on your website. Choose good Title and Description tags. If you are stuck, try use the first few lines of the pages content as a guide and reduce it to about 200-230 characters. Keep the Title at a length of 50 – 80 characters. 3(b). Include ALT Text – for each image used on your website, include ALT Text, which means when a user hovers over an image or indeed if an image does not load, descriptive text will appear, describing the contents of the image which did not load. Include a keyword or two in your ALT text where possible.
- Generate a SiteMap – Include a text based site map on your site, which means the search engine robots can navigate your website and index all your pages. Site maps can be in XML format or in HTML – avan better if you can include both.
- Check your site – This is a simple thing but often overlooked. Check your website for spelling errors, HTML Errors, Broken Links, Server Side Includes (SSI) which are not loading, Images which are not loading.
Before you implement these on your site…
(1) make a backup of your site – if you mess up the meta data, better going back to something which works rather than starting from scratch. and (2) record your current positions in search engines – that way you can measure your success rates, e.g. we were in position 56 last week and now we are at position #11 for the keyword “SEO Advice”. Keep monitoring your progress. Eventually this progress will slow down and you may need to implement some more advanced SEO techniques. The tips above are all suited to those who have a basic knowledge of HTML syntax and are aimed at websites which have little or no SEO work done on them. If you require a basic HTML introduction, leave a post with your comments and I will upload one. Tips for Organic SEO #2 will appear on the blog soon – bookmark the tab “Search Engine Optimization” on this site.
