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:: :: Search Engine Optimization for your Internet Marketing

SEO Tips & Techniques - Do's and Don'ts

Most of the top search engines have highly complex algorithms that are programmed to reward content of a site that is structured in a logical manner, well written and constantly refreshing. They are also programmed to detect and penalize sites who practice spam techniques to manipulate their algorithm - by using tricks to fool the so called "spiders", "robots" and "crawlers". Search Engines are constantly refining and adjusting their algorithms to due away with spammers.  So, it’s imperative to avoid all deceptive spamming practices because your site will be permanently removed and banned from their indexes. In other words, you may find yourself in a position where all your work, money and time spent flushed down the toilet forever. Then you will have to call me to get you out of it.  Remind you, I am not cheap. We can't have that. Can We?

Now lets get started, get a pen and paper to take notes.  Meta Tag Inflation, Repeated Submissions, Link Farms, Use of Doorway Pages, Invisible Text and Cloaking will surely take you to the path of destruction and disappointment. Some who want to be webmasters feel sure that they have tricked and beat the algorithm of a search engine, but their glory is temporary. This sort of practice will get you black listed and banned forever. The (SE) Search Engine game as we know it in our world has drastically changed.  I strongly believe that we are seeing the beginning of this fascinating medium.  I just love it.  Many search engines today ignore Meta tags altogether. For example, most search engines do not give any heed to your keyword Meta tags. I still use them, because I strongly believe if it works and cannot hurt me, why not?

Search Engine Optimization is not an overnight task.  Also it is not magic.  There aren't any tricks,  magic potions and lost secrets.  Long term optimization is best achieved by hard work. I will bet that a well written website with lots of useful content related to your subject will definitely make you an authority in your field and will also gain ranking.  Some call it "bragging rights", on all search engines.  Use this knowledge to present the best content to the search engine. Make sure that your site is search engine friendly without making any attempt to beat its algorithm. if you try, you will lose.  I guarantee it. Your website is like a baby, if you don't feed it, he or she will die.

Now many of you at this point are asking the following questions.  Where do I start?  What can I or cannot do?  Well, there are two answers to that question.  Number one, gear yourself up to spend the next year, countless hours writing content, countless hours requesting article and/or link exchanges with other websites...  Well you get my point.  Or you can politely call upon us to do this tedious work for you.  After all that is what we do all day long.  And Yes... we do charge.

Here is a list of what I call the big No No's: Do not Do Them

1. Flash. Oh they are pretty, but not search engine friendly. Now don't go out and start email me about "well I have seen flash websites ranking top 10".  Well guess what, I did not say that it could not be optimized and rank. Yes it can be done, but look at it this way, I am a strong believer that the majority of surfers that will buy your products are using Pentium 100 or lower with dial up. hehehe. Hey, that is how they can afford to buy.  Therefore, I build sites that are informative and fast to download.  *Here is a thing to know, I will bet you didn't know it.  Keep reading, I will tell you later on. Try opening a flash site on dial up, then you will see why it is not advantageous.  Don't make your home page in all flash. If you choose to, it is your money and I will gladly create the most beautiful flash site for you.  Remember, most of the search engines cannot read the flash yet. Although search engines are experimenting 'flash readable' algorithm, there are still some flaws.  Plus, it is a long time coming.  Please, I don't know when. Really?  No emails please, I really don't know.
    

2. Frames.  I called them site killers.  I literally despise them. Don't build your site in frames - most of the search engines' spiders have problems with frames. Still, if you want frames, there are techniques available to work around it. Consult a good search engine expert like myself who is knowledgeable enough to handle framed sites.
   
    

3. Graphics.  It is good to have them, but not too many.  Don't present heavy graphics to your clientele because spiders can't read graphics, they read html in well written content format.  The more information you provide, the more popular you will be with the surfers and the search engines will reward you for it in the form of top ten ranking.
   
    

4. Meta Keywords Stuffers.  Hey, in my early days, I am guilty of it.  Then again, I am guilty of many mistakes.  That is how I became so knowledgeable in the field.  Don't 'inflate' your Meta keywords by irrelevant terms like "Sex" "Playboy" etc.. to attract traffic. First of all, such highly competitive keywords will not get you anywhere. Second, irrelevant terms screws up your keyword relevance and density. Plus, if you are selling shoes, why would you want to be found for sex.  Catch my drift..
   
    

5. Java Scripts. Don't solely use JavaScript rollovers, graphical links or image maps as your only means of site navigation, search engines need text links to navigate.
   
    

6. Keywords Spam. Here is another one that I am guilty of.  Yes, again in my early days... Any way, don't try to trick the search engines with keyword spam techniques like putting 'invisible' text, white-on-white. Search engines will catch it and penalize you for it.  Build your site user friendly and you will have nothing to worry about.
   
    

7. Don't repeat keywords in your tags more than 2-3 times.  Here is another one that I am guilty of.  Yes, again in my early days... Any way, Search engines consider keyword repetition as spam .
    

8. Don't repeat identical content in your entire ALT Text attribute on the same page. This one too.
   
    

9. Don't repeat the same Meta Tags on all the pages of your site. It is not considered as spam, but you are preventing yourself for been found for different keywords phrases. Each page's Meta Tags should be optimized as per the content and 'theme' of that page.
   
    

10. Cloaking. This one is very common on the internet.  Don't show the search engines pages or content your visitors are not going to view. This is considered unfair by the search engines.
     

11. Don't go after links farm or FFA (Free for All) link popularity methods to improve your Page Rank. Most of these link farms are either black listed, banned or ignored by search engines.  That can also get you banned.  A few incoming or inbound links from quality sites can boost your Page Rank more than what you would get from a 100 ordinary sites.
    
     

12. Auto-Submit.  First of all, I am not going to say that they don't work, but I would rather manually submit to at least know where I am landing.  Don't use automated software to submit 100s of URLs or doorway pages or submit repeatedly. Search engine also penalize for that.
    
     

13. Do not submit to 1000s of search engines by using automated software or online submission services. Really, the top 20 search engines control 95% of search traffic. If you are well indexed in the top-20, you don't need to worry about the rest.
    
     

14. Don't use multiple instances of the same tag on the same page. Search engines can detect and penalize your site for using more than one title tag on the same page.  Ok, you can use title tag as long as it reads the same as the text link.
    
     

15. Identical Content.  Now this one never made sense to me.  Why would you want to waste your time, doing it. Make sure that your website does not have identical content carrying different file names.  Also, do not duplicate a page of your site, give different file names to the copies, and submit each one. Search engines can detect it and often drop out all those pages.

Here's a list of what I call the big Yes Yes' : Do Do the Yes'

1. Meta Tags. Refresh your Meta tags frequently. Although, less emphasis are weigh on them.  I still use them correctly because they cannot hurt you.  Meta Tags have been heavily manipulated over the years that they are losing value with the search engines.  Title and Description tags are still very important.
   
    

2. Title Tags. Keep the Title tag short, 50 to 80 characters. I keep mine long enough to make my point for the page, usually around 65 characters.  Put the most important keywords in the beginning but make sure your title makes sense to users. Built your title tags around the theme of each page.
   
    

3. Description Tags. Again, make sure this tag make sense because it may bite in your derriere in the SERPS. In other words, if you create a well description of your products or services, I am pretty sure that it will include your keyword.  Keep your important key phrases in mind when you are writing it. A description of about 25 words should be fine.
   
    

4. Keywords Tags. Keep the Keywords tag short, about 25 words. Do not repeat words too often. Keep the words related and relevant.
   
    

5. Alt Tags.  They were created to tell your user what the image is.  Do not stuff your alt tags with keywords.  Use common sense.  If you have an image of a map, don't go and stuff it with your keywords.  Simply call it "Map" or United States Map".
   
    

6. Important.  Research your keyword by using a free tool such as Overture. COM & a paid software tool WordTracker.Com.  I am sure they have a trial version.  I personally use overture, and you may have an idea why?  hehehe.  Why built a website and people are not finding you for your services and/or products.  Tools like Overture will help you research and understand what people are typing in the search engines for your products and/or services.  Use it.  It is free.  Stay away from competitive keywords.  Start with not so competitive keywords to create some form of traffic to your site and you will see overtime with good seo you will start seeing yourself popping for heavier keywords.
   
    

7. Content.  Remember the baby theory.  Well it is food to your website and search engines will love you. Some people put a minimum and a maximum of content length.  Look, be as natural as possible and keep it as long as you need to make your presentation.  Keep the most important key phrases towards the beginning of the text. As they say, to me it is a myth.  The robots will crawl a page the same manner every time.  Remember you are writing for a human being and some not so bright.  You don't want it to look like a dictionary to your users.  Keep it entertaining.
   
    

8. Content Update.  Keep your visitor especially the returned ones motivated to come back by offering something different every now and often. Give the search engines and your users something new on each of their visits
   
    

9. Graphical navigation or menu bar should have alternate text navigation links.
   
    

10. Site Map.  Very important and your surfers will thank you for it.  Nothing worst than a confusing and bad navigable website.  Put up a Site Map page for your site. Site map is also often called "spider food". Robots find it very easy to navigate and index the entire site content using this file.
    
     

11. Use your directories and filenames to contain your important keywords. It helps in your ranking.
    
     

12. Dynamic Websites.  Remove the variables from your URL. Search engine spiders are programmed to leave sites that have variables such as "?" and "%" in the URL. Some search engines will index some of your pages with variables, but certainly not all of them, and probably not enough of them to position your site effectively. Some scripts like Mod Rewrite allow you to present a dynamic looking URL as if it is a static URL.
    
     

13. Make your HTML code multiple browser and W3C compliant.
    
     

14. Include Robots.txt file or robot tags to guide search engines on what to exclude from indexing. The search engine bots crawls the internet all the time.  You don't want them to waste their time indexing your 'images' directory.
    
     

15. Link Exchange.  Seek and request links from sites, which list topical sites such as yours. This is different from FFA links. Persuade prominent sites to link to your site. Offering reciprocal link usually helps them to accede to your request. Remember, quality of inward links, not quantity is what matters in building your Page Rank.
    
     

16. Manual Submission.  Just submit your index page and the robot will end up crawling your whole site.  There is no need to submit each file of your site. Search engines will automatically spider the complete site through the Site Map links. If your site does not show up in their index in 8 to 10 weeks, try submitting it once more. Or call me and I can surely get you in there for sure.
    
     

17. If you can set aside a budget for it, we strongly recommend paid submissions in Pay-for-Inclusion based Search Engines and Directories network, like - Inktomi, AltaVista, Fast/Lycos, Ask Jeeves/Teoma, Yahoo. Paid submission to these directories and search engines will help you generate traffic within a few days and eventually will boost your ranking. That’s what I call money well spent.