Sunday, March 05, 2006

 

21 Fastest SEO Tips

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A lot continues to change in Search Engine Optimization. I just got back from SES New York and I learned a lot of great tools and tips that I wanted to share. To start, lets focus on the key important things you need to do (or not do) with your website. I mean to make this the most complete, shortest, and fastest reading set of tips ever!
  1. Links = must. Every link is a vote. The link, the text within the anchor tag, the source URL, and the text near the anchor tag are all important to the where you show up in search results.
  2. Short relevant TITLE = must. Don't put "news", "home page", or other such stuff in the title tag. Format: [document title] - [site title]
  3. Dynamic URLs = bad. Max 1 or 2 status variables such as articleid=.
  4. Session IDs = bad. Using session or timestamps make the search engine think every link has duplicate content.
  5. Short URLs = must. The longer the URL the less important the link looks to crawlers. URLs should also contain keywords relevent to the title.
  6. Natural growth of links = good/bad. Got a way to get 1000 links in a day? It could be really good or it could get you a spam flag. Just be careful.
  7. Meta Tags = good. Only use keyword and description meta tags if they are different and relevant for every page. Max 5 keywords per page.
  8. Text Navigation = must. The search engine can't click on your image maps or fill out your forms. Always use text as a backup. And don't use drop down navigation!
  9. 301 moved content = must. Redirect (301) old URLs to moved content to the new location, search engines will still count those old links.
  10. 301 your domains = must. Redirect (301) your http://domain.com traffic to http://www.domain.com traffic.
  11. Javascript redirects = bad. Don't use Javascript redirects for your links. This often includes complex javascript navigation.Use href.
  12. Internal links = good. Link related content and important content (root, site map) from within your site. This tells the engines about your site.
  13. Text in graphics = bad. If you can copy and paste it into a text editor then search engines can't see it.
  14. Keyword rich text = must. Be creative, describe things, learn to write good content, and use terms that people might search on.
  15. Directories = must. yahoo, dmoz, wikipedia, botw - get in them!
  16. Buying links = bad. Search Engines keep an eye on networks that sell links, and flag them (and the sites they link to) as spam.
  17. Alt Text = good. Search engines see alt text. They don't all use it the same way but you should use it.
  18. Site Map = good. Use a site map page to tell the search engines how to find all of your different content sections.
  19. Doorway/Splash pages = bad. Your most important content should be at your root.
  20. Flash = bad. Its nice as a movie, but flash websites are indexed by search engines. And no one is trying to find your site by searching for "Click here to skip."
  21. Links to authorities = must. Links to authorities on your subject matter tell the engines what your page is about. (search site? link Search Engine Watch and Google)
Is this all there is? Certainly not. But it’s a good start. Stay tuned to the Blog and I'll post new tools and tricks as I find them. Oh, and feel free to post your own to the comments.

# filed by individualist @ 9:44 PM 106 comments

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