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Search Engine Optermisation

Search Engine Optimisation, SEO

If you have control over the content of your site their are few simple rules to follow as far as SEO is concerned. These guidelines have been summarised below

note, Search engine optimisation takes time! You need to constantly update your site and be patient. It can take upto three months before the search engins recognise your efforts so don't get disheartened to soon.

To increase your sites search engine listings their are a few simple rules to follow and regular tasks witch need accomplishing.

  • First of all you need to register your site with all major search engines and DMOZ if this has not already be done.
  • Increase incoming links
    A web pages importance is calculated by the number of times it is referenced (linked to) by other web pages, the quality of the refering page is also taken into consideration. This means that the more incoming links you can get coming to your site the more likely your page will be displayed above another page of equal relevance to the search term. You should try to get as many quality links as possible, arrange link exchanges with similar sites etc... You can also increase your "not so quality" links with listing directories. Their are millions of them, if you aim to list your site on 10 a day you will not be going far wrong.
  • Increase your sites content
    more pages means more chance that one will be returned for a search term. you should aim to create 1 page a day following the guide lines below. Any web page, calendar entry, news article or product in the shop would be considered as a new page for SEO. Remember if your page content is useful, relevant and of a high quality people will want to link to it.

keywords or meta keywords

Though meta keywords tags are not a major factor search engines consider when ranking sites, they should not be left off the page. Both the meta keywords tag and the meta description tag contribute to your search engine ranking. A meta keywords tag is supposed to be a brief and concise list of the most important themes of your page.

When you write a meta keywords list, start by scanning the copy on your page. Make a list of the most important terms you see on the page. Then read through the list. Pick the 10 or 15 terms that most accurately describe the content of the page. If you can't narrow your keyword list down to 10-15 keywords, then the content on your page may be rambling to far. Because of the hyper-competitiveness of the current search engine placement landscape, pages need to be very focused on one or two specific keyword phrases in order to have a chance to get a top ten placement. For example, a page about northern Michigan apples and central Florida oranges doesn't have much of a chance to win for either "northern Michigan apples" or "central Florida oranges." To have any chance to win, you need to have one page about northern Michigan apples and one page about central Florida oranges.

Meta keywords tags should adhere to the following guidelines...

  1. keep your list of keywords or keyword phrases down to 10 - 15 unique words or phrases.
  2. separate the words or phrases using a comma (you do not need to leave a space between words separated by commas).
  3. do not repeat words or phrases.
  4. put your most important word or phrases at the beginning of your list.

Meta Description

The meta description tag is intended to be a brief and concise summary of your page's content. Think of the Yahoo! directory. You see your site title followed by a brief description of your site or business. The meta description tag is designed to provide a brief description of your site which can be used by search engines or directories.

When you write a meta description tag, you should limit it to 170 characters or 200 characters at most. You should pick a style and be consistent throughout your pages, writing a unique description for each page of your site. The Open Directory (DMOZ) also a detailed guide to writing descriptions. The key is that you want your description to adhere to W3C standards and be relevant to the content of the page. Again, it is intended to provide a brief summary of the contents of the page.

Page Content

A page should be proximately 300 - 500 words long and is the main factor considered by search engines when returning results to a search query. The page content defines the meta description and meta keywords. search engines see a pages keywords as being the most commonly occuring words on that page so a search engines idea of your pages keywords may not match up with what you think your keywords are.

If you page is a list of exercise or fitness tips, and on the page you list tips for things to do before, during, and after a workout, then you need to think to yourself, "what 10 or 15 words or phrases is this page MOST about?" Just because your page mentions dieting in the text doesn't mean that the page is about dieting. If you want to win for dieting, then create a page about dieting. The ultimate example of a page which is focused and ready for search engine optimization is a page from an encyclopaedia. Each page is brief, focused, and has just one theme.

one of your chosen keywords should appear every 10 words or so in the page content but not at the expense of good English.