Archive for January, 2008

Top 10 rules for SEO

Search Engine Optimization is a serious business.
Accomplishing SEO by yourself is daunting, even if you have some experience with web site design. If you are really serious about SEO you would best to hire a quality web design company, whose team of professionals can help you build your work at home business via the Internet. However, if you want to try yourself at SEO, and you are not dead serious about it, read on.

Link Popularity – First Strategic Step

Link popularity is defined as the total number of web sites linking to your site. The idea is to try to get as many relevant links to your site as possible. Relevant links are links from other sites to yours that are complimentary to both the product and services you are offering. However, keep in mind that technically weak sites linking to you often have the opposite effect by driving the ranking of your site down. Make sure that you have secured well placed links which will be a source of consistent, targeted traffic. And in reference to the recent developments, well placed links can generate additional search engine traffic to your site.

Most of the popular search engines factor Link Popularity into relevancy algorithms. The result of this is the growing number of relevant sites –that are linking to your site, which consequently improves your search engine rankings. There is no magic pill for getting good ratings apart from boosting your site’s popularity. Important part of any web site promotion effort .Knowing which sites link to your site and ever growing number of quality links is essential part of any web site promotion effort.
Useful link: http://www.linkpopularity.com/ (free service on link popularity, for major search engines)

‘Content-The Queen, The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost’

Big search engines like Google, Yahoo and others, first perform the title bar check and then the copy the text on your page. In case that the words in the title bar do not match the text content, the most likely your site will be marked as irrelevant. It is an absolute must that the text contains the powerful keywords that are in listed the title. Suggested density of these words should be between 5% - 8%.

Wording the Title Bar

Title bar wording is very important part of your site for it is the process search engines use for initially indexing of your page. Suggestion is to use approx. 80 characters to describe your products and services using powerful keywords and phrases.

Text on page

Try not to overload your page with text. This should be especially the case with the Home Page where you want to communicate your message over in effective and concise manner. The key information should be bullet pointed, so that the visitor can scan the page for the information he/she is looking for.

Text quantity

Rule of a thumb is to have at least 250 words on the page if you want to maximize your optimizing chances. Note that search engines only register text and not images, graphics and photographs.

Choice of Font

ALWAYS build websites using fonts that are user-friendly and easily readable such as Arial and Verdana.

Formatting

Important titles within the visible page should use H1 tagging in the formatting process. With H1 tagging, the search engine spider home in on those words and phrases as the most important on your website.

Fresh Content

In page ranking, fresh content can never be overestimated. You need to make sure your text is refreshed on regular basis. The reason behind is not only to keep regular visitors to the site interested, but more so the fact that it is favourably reflected to the search engines. If leave a page unaltered, after a certain period the search engines will have your rankings start falling.

Page – Size DOES Matter

Website needs to have fast loading pages, in case you want a visitor to stay on your site, instead of testing his patience and have him go elsewhere.

Linking – An Inside Job

From search engine’s point of view, the more relevant pages you have the better for your overall rank. Internaly linking of all the pages of the site together using text linking strategy helps search engine spiders crawl the whole site. Good tip is to always create site map.