5. use this tool in several ways: first… type in a category ‘keyword’ and
you’ll receive between 20 to 100 other relevant keywords
6. secondly… type in a website that ranks well and see what keywords they
use…
7. third… there is a facility on this page to download all keyword
suggestions as a text file… use it and file safely
8. be aware that when anyone types a request into a search engine it
includes keywords
9. these keywords need to be gathered and included upon your web page or
website
10. don’t use the keyword or keyword phrase more than 6 times on any one
webpage, otherwise this could be seen as keyword spamming
11. Find out what other websites use for their keywords… right click in an
empty space on the web page and click ‘view source’; and view their meta
tags listed between <head> and </head> at the very top of the page.
12. Don’t be eager to optimise your main keywords first. Concentrate on
minor keywords and see quick results and in doing this you’ll understand
the procedure better.
13. Attempting to work on your major keywords first could be costly. If
you misunderstand a procedure and you make an error some search engines
could penalise your efforts and it could damage how frequent the search
engine return.
14. Keywords are king. Now in most search engines - as you type in 'search
box' suggestions are prompted. These are search terms that are already
popular. Take a note of these and add them to your website. Or better
still make a web page with that as both the file extension and page title.
15. Be precise about your keywords! If you are a ‘marketing company’ and
are selling your skills on the internet… Don’t use the keywords ‘internet
marketing’; be more specific… instead of using one word such as internet
marketing which will be fiercely fought over, create sub headings… such
as: corporate marketing on the internet, professional marketing on a
budget…
16. If you take that process one step further… Imagine being a casual
browser on the internet and by chance you did want a corporate internet
marketer, and came across an advert for internet marketing. You may
wonder… and then press… and … find nothing that you really want… blah!...
not the right type of company for you. Precise wording guarantees a more
interested surfer and more targeted and likely to buy. promotion.
17. Include ‘long tail’ keyword phrases on your webpage or promotion. If
you are a travel company you should never use just ‘London’; but use for
example: ‘5 Star Luxury Hotel in the Heart of London’.
18. If your website site is new most search engines do not give it value,
especially for fiercely targeted keywords. Target sub categories first,
then when your site has more credibility, start chasing the more popular
words.
19. Type any keyword into Google and as you scroll down the listings
you’ll find sub category headings shouting out at you. Type in ‘weight
loss’ for example and within 20 listings you’ll find ‘weight loss plan’.
This is how you find your own 'long tail keywords'.
<<< o0o >>>
# Use anchor text on links that point to
your page with keywords you are targeting (both internal and external
sites).
# Along the same lines as the last tip, if you have images that click to
pages, use the ALT parameter within the <IMG> tag, and include whatever
keywords you are targeting.
# Generally, use common sense and stay away from trying to trick search
engines (cloaking tricks for example). It can get your site penalized or
even banned from the search engines.
# One of the most important factors is getting other sites to link to you
your website using your target keywords and phrases as the link text.
# Provide links on your pages to other websites with relevant content but
do not abuse reciprocal linking as you will be penalized heavily.
# Your page should be safe for older browsers, use html links and avoid
framesets to ensure a crawler can index it.
# Ensure your content is relevant and to the point and make correct use of
punctuation and grammar.
# Ensure your HTML code is well formatted making appropriate use of tags
such as h1, h2, alt, etc. Search engines like Google rank prefer
standards-compliant and semantically correct sites.
# Use meta tags including page title, keywords and description making sure
they accurately reflect the content of your page.
1. Create a MySpace account and use it to publicise your site.
2. Bookmark your site on Del.icio.us and if you’re really keen, add a
Del.icio.us button to your homepage.
3. Create a Technorati account and “claim” your blog.
4. Submit your site to free search engine friendly directories.
5. Conduct a survey. This is an excellent way to generate offline
publicity.
6. Place a free ad for your company on Gumtree.
7. Syndicate your site’s content by using an RSS feeds.
8. Submit your RSS feeds to aggregator sites like FeedBurner, Squidoo,
Feedboy, Jordomedia, FeedBomb, FeedCat, rssmad, feeddirectory and feedfury.
Stolen from DigitalPoint
9. Write an article related to your site and submit it to article sites.
10. Sign up to StumbleUpon and get your friends to Stumble your site.
11. Create a custom 404 page so that even if someone encounters an error
on your site, they are re-directed somewhere nice.
12. Set up a 301 redirect to take traffic from your non-www address to
your www address.
13. Add a link to your site in the signature of any forums you post on.
14. Tell your friends about your site. It’s free advertising init.
15. Speel cheek ur stie. Nothing appears more amateur than a site with
typos or spelling mistakes.
16. Test your site and make sure it appears correctly in all major
browsers.
17. Buy enough hosting. No one likes a slow site.
18. Don’t worry about PageRank - worrying about PageRank is as effective
as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.
19. Offer something for free. Free is good. People tell their friends
about free stuff.
20. Tell your neighbours, you never know what contacts they might have.
21. Offer your users as many ways as possible to contact you. MSN, Skype,
Yahoo etc all complement email, phone and a real address.
22. Advertise your site on Craigslist. It’s free, relevant and localised.
23. Do NOT use frames.
24. Submit your site to DMOZ.org. It may take time, but it’s worth it.
25. Create an XML sitemap of your site and submit it to Google.
26. Get a custom t-shirt made with your website url on it, and wear it
often.
27. Ask a large breasted lady to wear one too.
28. Sign up with an affiliate programme to sell your product, or if you’re
a publisher, make some cash!
29. On your Contact Page ask people if they mind receiving your
newsletter.
30. Send out a newsletter!
31. Go to a free seminar for Website owners. You might learn something.
32. Find quality and relevant blogs and leave a comment (with a link back
to your site of course).
33. Don’t pay people to submit your site to search engines. It’s a waste
of money.
34. YouTube and Google Video are excellent portals on which to launch a
viral campaign.
35. Giving away an eBook is an excellent way to generate word-of-mouth
about your site.
36. Sponsor a Wordpress theme or a phpListDirectory template.
37. If you sell products that are advertised on television by the
manufacturer, add “As Seen on TV” to your site!
38. Avoid proprietary technologies like Java and Active X.
39. Put downloadable content on your site, but make sure it’s not
manufacturer specific - so mp3 rather than wma.
40. Learn about CSS. It’s the new HTML.
41. Contribute to related subject areas on Wikipedia.
42. Ask bloggers and other Web site owners to review your site and/or
products.
43. Have user friendly page names - most tools comes with some way to
avoid
long page names.
44. If you must have a Flash homepage, make sure you have a “Skip Intro”
link.
45. Tell your local rag about your site. These newspapers are desperate
for stories and you may well even get a picture of your ugly mug
published.
46. Become a leading authority on your chosen subject.
47. Donate money to a charity and most will place a link on their site
back to you.
48. Abide to W3C standards - it will help your site in the long term.
49. Your local community sports teams offer cheap, but highly effective
sponsorship opportunities.
50. Publisise your site on related forums - but don’t spam!
51. Ask bloggers to write about your site or product - in return for a
link of course.
52. Offer a competition related to something in the news - so football
around the time of the World Cup etc.
53. Add a “Tell a Friend” function to your site, so people can easily
recommend you to their mates.
54. Have a Sitemap on your site to allow users to navigate around quickly
and to aid the search engines.
55. Have a nice keyword rich title at the top of each of your pages. Users
and search engines both like descriptive titles.
56. Include a Feedburner button on your site so people can easily
subscribe to your feed.
57. If you use PPC then create a landing page for each of your AdWords -
it’ll boost your conversations no end.
58. Appear on Dragon’s Den.
59. Create a Press section on your site where can you store all your press
releases, logos and banners.
60. Add a link to your site from within your eBay profile.
61. Ask your friends to give you honest feedback on your site.
62. The best way to find someone to do any kind of work on your site is
through personal recommendation.
63. Gain exposure by submitting photos and pictures to Flikr.
64. Share your banners on banner exchange sites.
65. Make sure it’s easy for your users to subscribe to your RSS feed.
66. Create a “lense” for your site on Squidoo
67. Ask friends, colleagues and associates to “Favourite” your blog on
Technorati.
68. You can add a Bulletin to your MySpace account promoting your site
that all your MySpace Friends will see.
69. Response to your customer’s emails promptly, even if it is with a
simply auto-responder. No one likes to wait 3 or 4 days for an
acknowledgement of their contact with you.
70. Get a professional Copywriter to give your site a once over. If you
are on a tight budget, limit to the just the homepage.
71. Make a list, “Top 10?s work well. Update it regularly to give your
visitors a reason to return.
72. What did you learn today? Tell other people and they might learn
something too.
73. Do you have really hot content on your site that geeks would love? If
so Slashdot will bring you a mass of traffic.
74. Deep link directories are an excellent way to promote inner pages of
your site.
75. Meta tags might carry less weight than previously, but you should
still have them on every page.
76. Ask your Gran for feedback on your site. Never ignore the silver
surfers.
77. Include a “Add to your Technorati favourites” button on your site.
78. Google Analytics is free and will tell you all you need to know about
who’s visiting your site.
79. Search engines will find you. Don’t pay money for your site to be
“submitted”.
80. Don’t be afraid to link to other sites, especially if they are
relevant and to highly respected sites.
81. Keep It Simple Stupid: use CSS to control layout, style and colours
and use HTML text rather than graphics to represent text.
82. Validate your HTML and CSS. It’ll help ensure your site displays well
in all browsers.
83. Small pages sizes and optimised graphics will give your site a snappy
feel and won’t require users to wait around for it to load.
84. If you plan to submit your site to lots of directory or article sites
- create an email especially for this. Delete it when you’re finished to
avoid spam.
85. “Link baiting” means writing some killer content that people will want
to link to. Like a “101 Tips to Improve Your Web Presence” list!
86. If your chosen field is technology related then write a “whitepaper”.
That’s a posh name for an article.
87. Google receives roughly 50% of all search requests, Yahoo 25% and MSN
just 10%. That’s a good rule of thumb as to how much emphasis to put on
each.
88. Make sure you have a robots.txt file in the root of your Web site. You
can use this to control search engines, but if nothing else it’ll reduce
the number of 404 errors in your Weblogs.
89. Free online games, a forum or chatrooms will give your users a reason
to come back to your site.
90. Ebooks with re-seller rights make an excellent “free gift” for your
site.
91. Upload your product feed to Froogle. It’s FREE!
92. This is an excellent list of Top 25 Social Bookmarking Sites
93. Search out unanswered questions on Yahoo! Answers and add your site as
the “Source”.
94. PageRank is vanity, ranking is sanity.
95. Yahoo are catching up with Google with an excellent set of webmaster
tools called Site Explorer.
96. Don’t buy traffic. It’s un-targeted and won’t convert.
97. Pay Per Click advertising gets you fast results - and if it’s handled
well can be very profitable.
98. Upload a favicon.gif file so that your users have a nice icon when
they bookmark your site.
99. And that’s it!
How
to use social networking sites to increase traffic!
How
to use content to bring the traffic to you!
Linking
to increase Search Ranking!
How
to choose the right domain name and host!
Site
submission strategies!
How
to make the most of your Marketing!
How
to use Html and Site Maps!
And
much much more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Consider yourself warned . . . SEO success will
not happen overnight and I'm not going to promise you it will. But
you will see results if you do it right and keep doing it. In
fact, you'll be able to start putting what you learn to use as you read.
Click on the photo to download
************************************
SEO Services UK
Small Business SEO Checklist: The Do’s
1. Commit yourself to the process. SEO isn’t a one-time event. Search
engine algorithms change regularly, so the tactics that worked last year
may not work this year. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment.
2. Be patient. SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take
months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the
newer you are to doing business online.
3. Ask a lot of questions when hiring an SEO company. It’s your job to
know what kind of tactics the company uses. Ask for specifics. Ask if
there are any risks involved. Then get online yourself and do your own
research—about the company, about the tactics they discussed, and so
forth.
4. Become a student of SEO. If you’re taking the do-it-yourself route,
you’ll have to become a student of SEO and learn as much as you can.
Luckily for you, there are plenty of great Web resources (like Search
Engine Land) and several terrific books you can read. Aaron Wall’s SEO
Book, Jennifer Laycock’s Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing,
and Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day by Jennifer Grappone and
Gradiva Couzin are three I’ve read and recommend.
5. Have web analytics in place at the start. You should have clearly
defined goals for your SEO efforts, and you’ll need web analytics software
in place so you can track what’s working and what’s not.
Top SEO
6. Build a great web site. I’m sure you want to show up on the first page
of results. Ask yourself, “Is my site really one of the 10 best sites in
the world on this topic?” Be honest. If it’s not, make it better.
7. Include a site map page. Spiders can’t index pages that can’t be
crawled. A site map will help spiders find all the important pages on your
site, and help the spider understand your site’s hierarchy. This is
especially helpful if your site has a hard-to-crawl navigation menu. If
your site is large, make several site map pages. Keep each one to less
than 100 links. I tell clients 75 is the max to be safe.
8. Make SEO-friendly URLs. Use keywords in your URLs and file names, such
as yourdomain.com/red-widgets.html. Don’t overdo it, though. A file with
3+ hyphens tends to look spammy and users may be hesitant to click on it.
Related bonus tip: Use hyphens in URLs and file names, not underscores.
Hyphens are treated as a “space,” while underscores are not.
9. Do keyword research at the start of the project. If you’re on a tight
budget, use the free versions of Keyword Discovery or WordTracker, both of
which also have more powerful paid versions. Ignore the numbers these
tools show; what’s important is the relative volume of one keyword to
another. Another good free tool is Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool, which
doesn’t show exact numbers.
10. Open up a PPC account. Whether it’s Google’s AdWords or Yahoo’s Search
Marketing or something else, this is a great way to get actual search
volume for your keywords. Yes, it costs money, but if you have the budget
it’s worth the investment. It’s also the solution if you didn’t like the
“Be patient” suggestion above and are looking for instant visibility.
How to SEO
11. Use a unique and relevant title and meta description on every page.
The page title is the single most important on-page SEO factor. It’s rare
to rank highly for a primary term (2-3 words) without that term being part
of the page title. The meta description tag won’t help you rank, but it
will often appear as the text snippet below your listing, so it should
include the relevant keyword(s) and be written so as to encourage
searchers to click on your listing. Related bonus tip: You can ignore the
Keywords meta altogether if you’d like; it’s close to inconsequential. If
you use it, put misspellings in there, and any related keywords that don’t
appear on the page.
12. Write for users first. Google, Yahoo, etc., have pretty powerful bots
crawling the web, but to my knowledge these bots have never bought
anything online, signed up for a newsletter, or picked up the phone to
call about your services. Humans do those things, so write your page copy
with humans in mind. Yes, you need keywords in the text, but don’t stuff
each page like a Thanksgiving turkey. Keep it readable.
13. Create great, unique content. This is important for everyone, but it’s
a particular challenge for online retailers. If you’re selling the same
widget that 50 other retailers are selling, and everyone is using the
boilerplate descriptions from the manufacturer, this is a great
opportunity. Write your own product descriptions, using the keyword
research you did earlier (see #9 above) to target actual words searchers
use, and make product pages that blow the competition away. Plus, retailer
or not, great content is a great way to get inbound links.
14. Use your keywords as anchor text when linking internally. Anchor text
helps tells spiders what the linked-to page is about. Links that say
“click here” do nothing for your search engine visibility.
15. Build links intelligently. Submit your site to quality, trusted
directories such as Yahoo, DMOZ, Business.com, Aviva, and Best of the web.
Seek links from authority sites in your industry. If local search matters
to you (more on that coming up), seek links from trusted sites in your
geographic area—the Chamber of Commerce, etc. Analyze the inbound links to
your competitors to find links you can acquire, too.
DIY SEO
16. Use press releases wisely. Developing a relationship with media
covering your industry or your local region can be a great source of
exposure, including getting links from trusted media web sites.
Distributing releases online can be an effective link building tactic, and
opens the door for exposure in news search sites. Related bonus tip: Only
issue a release when you have something newsworthy to report. Don’t waste
journalists’ time.
17. Start a blog and participate with other related blogs. Search engines,
Google especially, love blogs for the fresh content and highly-structured
data. Beyond that, there’s no better way to join the conversations that
are already taking place about your industry and/or company. Reading and
commenting on other blogs can also increase your exposure and help you
acquire new links. Related bonus tip: Put your blog at yourdomain.com/blog
so your main domain gets the benefit of any links to your blog posts. If
that’s not possible, use blog.yourdomain.com.
18. Use social media marketing wisely. If your small business has a visual
element, join the appropriate communities on Flickr and post high-quality
photos there. If you’re a service-oriented business, use Yahoo Answers to
position yourself as an expert in your industry. With any social media
site you use, the first rule is don’t spam! Be an active, contributing
member of the site. The idea is to interact with potential customers, not
annoy them.
19. Take advantage of local search opportunities. Online research for
offline buying is a growing trend. Optimize your site to catch local
traffic by showing your address and local phone number prominently. Write
a detailed Directions/Location page using neighborhoods and landmarks in
the page text. Submit your site to the free local listings services that
the major search engines offer. Make sure your site is listed in
local/social directories such as CitySearch, Yelp, Local.com, etc., and
encourage customers to leave reviews of your business on these sites, too.
20. Take advantage of the tools the search engines give you. Sign up for
Google’s webmaster Central and Yahoo’s Site Explorer to learn more about
how the search engines see your site, including how many inbound links
they’re aware of.
21. Diversify your traffic sources. Google may bring you 70% of your
traffic today, but what if the next big algorithm update hits you hard?
What if your Google visibility goes away tomorrow? Newsletters and other
subscriber-based content can help you hold on to traffic/customers no
matter what the search engines do. In fact, many of the DOs on this
list—creating great content, starting a blog, using social media and local
search, etc.—will help you grow an audience of loyal prospects and
customers that may help you survive the whims of search engines.
SEO Articles
Write unique content (HIGH PRIORITY)
Unique content is important too. You need to provide content that has
different information than what is on other sites and other Web pages.
Add new content all the time (HIGH PRIORITY)
Sites that have new content added on a regular basis are seen as more
reliable than sites that rarely do. This also helps you to increase the
amount of relevant content on your site, which also improves your
rankings.
Create a great keyword phrase (HIGH PRIORITY)
The first thing you should do when working on search engine optimization
is find a great keyword phrase for that page. You shouldn't try to
optimize your entire site to one keyword phrase - instead focus on writing
pages for specific keywords and phrases.
Choose a phrase that is popular, but not too popular (HIGH PRIORITY)
When trying to decide on a keyword phrase, you want to find one that is
popular but not extremely popular. This may seem counter-intuitive, but
the reality is that extremely popular keywords are very desirable and so
very competitive. It's better to try to optimize for keywords that you can
rank higher. You'll get more pageviews from a less popular keyword when
you're on the first or second page of the search engines, than from a
super popular keyword that you only make it to page 50 of search engines.
SEO Promotion
Use the keyword phrase in your title tag (HIGH PRIORITY)
The title tag is one of the most important tags on your Web page. And
placing your keyword phrase in the title tag, preferably at the beginning,
is very important to get that phrase into the search engines. Plus, that
puts your keyword phrase as the link in the search engine index.
Get a domain with your keyword phrase (HIGH PRIORITY)
Putting your keyword phrase in your domain name is a great way to optimize
for that phrase.
Use the keyword phrase in your URL (HIGH PRIORITY)
Even if you can't get your keywords into your domain name, you can put
them into your URLs. Search engines read the URLs and assign value to the
text they find there.
Use your keyword phrase a lot, but not too much (HIGH PRIORITY)
The ratio of your keywords to the rest of the text on your page is called
the keyword density. It's important to repeat your keywords in your
document, but not too much. Keyword density should be between 3 and 7% for
your primary keyword phrase and 1-2% for any secondary keywords or keyword
phrases.
An
introduction to search engine optimization