SEO in a Nutshell

SEO - Short for search engine optimization, it is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site. SEO helps to ensure that a site will be found by the search engine and will be assigned well position on search. Here are some tips on SEO to boost up traffic.

01. Keep Meta Tag Keyword Lists Under 1000 Characters : Keep your meta tag keyword list to under 1000 characters. Anything more and you may have your relevancy rank penalized by search engines. Additionally, do not repeat any one keyword in the keyword meta tag more than three times.

02. Use Plural Keywords : Try to use your keywords in the plural form. Such as, CLOCKS instead of CLOCK. A user search on the keyword CLOCK will find both CLOCK and CLOCKS but a user search for CLOCKS will usually not turn up pages using the keyword CLOCK in singular form.

03. Use Keywords In Page Title : Many search engines will look to see what words you have used in your page title tag. It is VERY important that you include the keywords you want to be found under in this title tag.

04. Short Meta Tag Description : Most search engines will truncate your description if it is too long deleting possible key points you are trying to convey. Keep your meta description to 25 words or less to avoid having posted an incomplete message to readers.

05. Different Description & Keywords For Different Pages : Don't use same keywords and description for all of your pages. Your contact us page's keywords and description shouldn't be same as your homepage.

06. The First 250 Words : Search Engine robots scrutinize the first 250 word of text in your page for relevancy and keyword count. You must use your keywords in the appropriate proportions in this part of your page. Some say a 10% - 40% keyword count in this section of text is ideal. Always start this text with the page title you used in the title tag. Avoid keyword repetition (i.e. repeating keywords one after the other).

07. Don't Use Meta Refresh Command : This command is used to automatically transfer a page to another without requiring reader input.

08. Use Links Containing Keywords : One way to increase a keyword count is to use a series of working or non-working links containing a description and link that incorporate your keywords. This also has the advantage of providing links to other web sites from your page which the Search Engines also look for.

09. Avoid Robotic - Automated Submission : When submitting your web page to one of the top 8 search engines, try to post your page manually rather than using any automated software or sites that post for you to get into the prime search engines. Many people believe that over 70% of your hits will come from Google and Yahoo! It's probably worth spending a considerable amount of time trying to get a good ranking from theses search engines. (Actually Yahoo is more like a directory than a search engine and requires that you read their help pages about their listing method)

10. Get Your Pages Linked From Other Sites : Some Search Engines will increase your relevancy if your site is linked to from other sites. Start to surf sites, try to search good sites having better page rank and those sites should be from your niche or closely related. Link back from a garments related site to webmaster resource site can't be proved as useful. Never put any outbound link to a bad neighborhood site. If any site tries to boost up their search engine ranking by any illegal methods, making engines fool, using cloaking, having duplicated content instead of no original content, having hidden text and links and doorway pages, Search Engines may penalize such sites and stop to index them. Also sites which are involved in promoting hates, communalism or involved in link exchange system, spam, spread viruses, contains pornography get black listed. Before you link back to any site written in language not known to you, start converting the content of that site into your language. You can use Bablefish Translation System which you can get visiting the homepage of Atlavista and if the content is similar from your niche then next check whether the site is being indexed of Search Engines or not. You can check whether it is being indexed by Google or not - just simply typing site:www.yoursite.com into the query box of search engines. If no result comes out, then be sure the site is black listed. If you have outbound links to many different sites, such checks might take a lot of time. Visit http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/ - it provides a tool that reports links to and from suspicious sites and sites that are missing in Google's index.

11. Avoid Java & Frames & Flash : Search Engine robots face difficulties with pages containing Java and frames (not the Java Script which is ignored by search engines) and flash elements.

12. Don't Use Text That Is The Same Color As The Background : Search Engines look for text that is the same color as the background which is being used to increase the keyword count without the reader seeing the text. This has become a definite no and you may be penalized for such tactics.

13. Use Image Alt Tag : Every image allows you to include a text description of that image in the alt tag. Use these tags to incorporate keywords or phrases to increase your keyword count. Search engines do consider alt tags in their relevancy rankings.

14. No Broken Link & No Broken Image & No Under Construction Page : Never have broken images or links. Search Engines hate these things. If your site has broken links, don't even start submission. Google won't care about you if you don't care about your visitors.

15. Have Unique Content : Always have unique contents. You can put content from Open Directory but that doesn't uplift your rank. Again it may help you if the site from where you are lending articles or texts - is not counted by any search engines. But the probability of such happenings is 00.000000001%. Note that Search Engines penalize sites without own content.

16. Update Your Site : You need to periodically update the content of your website. Search Engines love growing sites. Spiders give better rankings to sites that update content often.

17. Use Sitemap : Make your XML sitemap and submit it to Google by visiting the link https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login. Also create a robots.txt file because this will tell the search engines what not to spider on your site.

18. Use of Dynamic Pages : Some CMS like Wordpress, they offer SEO friendly URL. So there should not be any problem with this.

19. DMOZ Plays : Manually register your site with DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project. The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors and feeds other leading web directories.

20. Site Maturity : Ranking mostly depends upon the maturity of the site. Older sites will have better rankings and will have more indexed pages. If it is financially possible then register your domain for 4-5 years. It will be obvious that you have not entered the world with the aim of a vagabond. You have come to do something. Search Engines will take you in consideration.

21. Organic SEO : Article writing and blogging, these two Organic SEO yields the better result than an average skilled SEO analyst can do. Why not submitting some unique articles and to submit them to article directories with pagerank, even 7/8/9 out of 10? Put a link to your site there. Forum posting might be another good way. Post in forums and use your domain name as signature.

22. Keep Patience : Once you follow these suggestions, allow search engines time to re-index your site. In the Internet age, we're looking for instant results. However, it does take some time for all of your search engine optimization techniques to take hold.

I end this article saying "It is good SEOing your site - but over SEOing may kill you."