100 SEO Tips

Robin Paardekam — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 08:56:00 GMT

Boris Veldhuijzen-Van Zanten wrote a great blogpost in which he requested his readers to come up with the best SEO-tips. He collected all remarks and created a list with them, which he then converted into a nice WordPress plugin. For all readers who do not use WordPress, I thought it would come in handy to publish the complete list just online. Here it is:

Google Base is a great place to submit all kinds of information that link back to you.
A few quality links can weigh much more than a lot of non related low quality ones.
About the URL's, consider using dashes between the words. not '%20' or '_'
Always set up 301 redirects for renamed or deleted pages.
Always use "alt" and "title" tags for images, flash objects and links.
Avoid people copying your content by checking regularly with Copyscape
Break larger pages into two or more smaller ones.
Browsers allow for bad html code, SE spiders are a different beast.
Build everything you want indexed so that it also works without javascript, flash, java, activex and css.
Build sites to pass an honest-to-goodness human inspection, and not just an algorithmic inspection.
Buy 299 Steps to Website Heaven. An invaluable guide to SEO for the SME
Buying backlinks is always a bad idea.
Check regularly for Dead Links or old links that are redirecting to something else.
Check that what you think you have done = what you have actually done.
Check that your site looks OK in all browsers before taking the time to promote it at browsercam.com
Choose menu labels that are intuitive for visitors and also make keyword sense (without stuffing).
Create a Google Gadget to promote your site.
Create a XML sitemap as well as the usual HTML one
Define a clear and measurable SEO goal.
Despite progress in indexing dynamic sites, static-looking still URLs do better, and are easier to remember.
Do not forget to offer other payment options giving details ( bank account number etc. )
Don't buy links from any company that offers to sell them to you - you'll be banned from Google for sure
Don't have keywords in small font or the same colour as the background of your site - it's classed as spam
Don't link back to "/index.html" but to the / root of your domain.
Don't neglect your sitemaps, don't leave broken links in them.
Don't think that being found for your company name is good - more people DON'T know your name than DO
Don't try and optimise a page for more than a couple of search phrases - it just won't work.
Don't use automated tools to submit to Google - it's against their terms and conditions and could get you banned
Don't use meta redirect, Google dislikes them.
Eliminate or make less prominent all links to fluff pages (like member profiles).
Ensure keywords used in titles and meta descriptions actually appear on the page and in significant numbers.
Ensure that secondary keywords appear towards the top of the page and are consistent with the primary topic.
Ensure what the Search bot sees = what the user sees.
Find out how to make the most of Web 2.0 PR by reading The New Rules of PR
Find out what keywords your target market is searching for at wordtracker.com
Find out where you competitors are advertising - that's where you should be too
Focus each page on one topic and make sure the page title and description tags are consistent.
Forget about 'cloaking' and other Black Hat techniques - you'll be found out eventually and banned!
Formulate a strategic (viral marketing) plan for more relevant inbound links to your website
Generate fresh content as often as possible.
Google and other search engines simply love sites that are regularly updated.
Google has more than 50 datacenters - find out where you are listed in them all
Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case.
Have a "verisign" or similar trustworthy certificate.
If you have a blog, start investing some time in community marketing, use blog friends for Facebook, and submit to Twitter.
If you offer more than one service, it may be worth investing in producing a few niche ‘mini sites’ to capitalise on niche and ultra targeted traffic.
Ignore the Meta Keywords tag; it has no value
Is your site "Client" focused or "We We" focused? Find out!
It’s tempting to only choose the phrases with the most searches to optimise for, but the key word is relevancy.....
Learn about 'anchor text' and use it where you can
Learn about Google Search Engine Ranking factors
Link out to quality external sites where appropriate.
Link to your less tasty pages from the site map.
Make sure that each page has a 'call to action' whether it be to sign up, click here or buy
Make sure the search phrases you are optimising for are included in the content of your site
Make sure whatever you're trying to sell/promote/accomplish is user friendly and your call to actions are clear.
Make sure you use accurate titles in pages, and avoid redundant phrases
Make sure you use valid html code.
Make sure you're targeting the correct keyphrases on your front page?
Meta tag that describes the page accurately in more detail, and motivates the searcher to click.
More pages of content mean more potential incoming links for your site = more traffic.
Never, ever, delete a 301 redirect.
No 301 or 302 redirects unless the URL has actually been changed
Participate in busy online communities that will give you valuable links to your website
Plan the site architecture using a rational naming hierarchy so that the folders make sense.
Plan the site so it can easily change when new web technology comes along. Be modular.
Redirect non-www to www or vice versa (domain name canonicalisation).
Register with Google Webmaster Tools to find out what Google really thinks of your site
Remember to delete the obsolete page from the server.
Run Zenu or similar for links out on page internal navigation
Schedule a "Search Engine Position Audit" in your schedule to make your results measurable.
Search Yahoo and Google at the same time and compare results.
Search Engine Genie’s Sandbox Checker will help you to see if you\'re in The Google Sandbox or not
Site optimalisation is more effective than simply a having keyword rich domain
Spiders don't look at a fancy CSS. Build with bot in mind, make sure the content is available and put the important stuff first.
Start a blog, search engines like fresh content. Actually, they LOVE it.
Stop bots from indexing pages which you don\'t want in the index, especially dynamic sections which have no relevance to the SERPs.
STOP optimising for single words and start thinking in terms of key PHRASES not keywords.
Stop using the 'reindex' META tag - no bot actually listens to it, especially not Google
Submit your website to reliable directories, and stay away from blackheads.
Take time out every now and then to review Google's Webmaster Guidelines
Think seriously about your META description tag - it’s what people are going to read in most cases when you show up in a search.
Thinking of blogging for business in order to help your SEO? Great idea - check out http://www.betterbusinessblogging.com/ first though
Title tag that accurately describes the subject of the page, contains the most important keyword (or two, or three if required).
To quote W3C, "Cool URIs don't change."
Treat search engines the same as visitors.
Try and eliminate the phrase "click here" from your site, and use your keyphrases instead
Unless you're a 301 redirect master, don't rename your pages.
Use a plugin like AddThis so users can easily submit your site to other social media.
Use consistent and correct server response codes
Use H1 tag once on the page, H2 for a few of the sub headers, and H3 for less important titles.
Use meta keywords tags, but with a few well-chosen keywords.
Use solid semantic structures. It makes a spider's job a whole lot easier.
Use the META tag content="noarchive" to keep search engines from showing the cached version of your site
Use the w3c validator on ALL of your pages, link to css and javascript docs, not inline.
user-friendly-url's (with dashes between words, not underscores)
When getting others to link to your website make sure they link to a relevant internal page, not just your front page
Write articles - they establish you as an expert and can be placed on sites such as Ezinearticles.com and feelgr8.co.uk
Use a script that will generate meta-tags out of the first 250 characters of the page itself.
Publish a WordPress Plugin to get people to link to your pages.

Search Engine Ranking Factors

Robin Paardekam — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 23:53:00 GMT

There are a lot of sites describing how you could improve your Google Pagerank. They usually don't add any real new information besides "Make sure you are being linked to", "Use proper META-tags", "Make sure all interesting keywords are used in your TITLE-tags and in the BODY of your documents". But here's a site that finally describes the real keytopics in Search Engine Optimization and how these factors are used to determine your PageRank.

Search Engine Ranking Factors V2

BTW: I personally think Windows Live Search crawls and indexes my sites a lot faster and much more complete then Google does but still I've noticed that Google just is used a lot more often. Let's hope that changes soon. :)

Robin Paardekam : Live

100 SEO Tips

Search Engine Ranking Factors