Top FAQs on Search Engine Optimization - Updated for 2010!

I included the top 10 questions that most people are asking about SEO along with the answers and references. Hope you find this useful!

1. What is the fastest way to get my site indexed?
The normal way is to submit your URL directly to the Search Engines via Google Add or Yahoo add.

Based on my experience, the fastest way is to get your site URL linked from a high activity page. High activity means that the content changes very frequently. For example, putting your new site URL in your DP forum signature is an excellent way to have your site indexed quickly. This method will normally get my site indexed within a week.

The following video is from Matt Cutts explaining indexing of new pages:
[video=youtube;Zcu3fp5G5EI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcu3fp5G5EI[/video]


2. My ranking has dropped! What should I do?

First of all, ranking changes every day because all Search Engines updates their algorithm very regularly. All webmasters should expect ranking fluctuations especially when the site is new. If you noticed that there is a drop in ranking, check your Google Analytics account to see if this affects the entire traffic stream from Search Engines. If there is a very drastic drop like over 80% of your traffic is now gone, then it may be a ban or severe penalty happening.

Refer to Google Reconsideration Request Page for more information on how to get your site unbanned.


3. Who can I trusted for SEO advice?

Straight from the Search Engines =)

- Google Webmaster Guidelines
- Yahoo Search Content Quality Guidelines
- Bing Webmasters Guidelines

Important for all webmasters - Google SEO Starter Guide


4. I hear that we must keep outgoing links on a page to under 100. Is there an official reference?

Yes, refer to Google Webmaster Guidelines:

Reference: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769


5. Should I use hyphens or underscores in URLs?

Use Hyphens aka dashes. Google take hyphens as words separators. A video below explains that:

[video=youtube;Q3SFVfDIS5k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3SFVfDIS5k[/video]


6. I want to target my site to a specific country, for example - Singapore. How can I do that?

The most direct way is to acquire a .com.sg or .sg domain name. This is known as the country domain extension.

Second, you can choose to host the site in the country targeted. Search Engines also use web host IP to determine which country is the content most relevant to.

Finally, just register for a Google Webmaster Account and set the settings inside the account to target anyone of the countries you want to target. Please note that this setting only available to non-country extension domain names such as .com, .net or .org.


7. Will page loading speed has an impact on site rankings?

Yes, watch the video from Matt Cutts from Google team:

[video=youtube;muSIzHurn4U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muSIzHurn4U[/video]



8. I have done a research on my keywords that there are 6000 exact monthly searches but i only have a few visits each day and I am ranking on first page. What can I do?

One of the factors to get people click on your Search Engine Listing is the title and description that Search Engines show. In fact, this is the ultimate objective of SEO, getting targeted people to click on your listing.

You can start off by changing your title a bit. Notice that titles do get cut off in the listing so you should put the most important words in the front. Another thing is to change your meta description tag. Search Engines sometimes use this tag to show your page description.

Watch the following video for some illustration:

[video=youtube;NlJiLDn9-38]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlJiLDn9-38[/video]


9. Is it worthwhile optimizing images? How do I go about doing it?

Optimizing images on your site is definitely one of the ways to attract organic traffic. You can optimize an image by including the description of an image in the following places:

- Image file name
- Image path name aka URL
- Image ALT tag
- Text that surrounds an image

Watch the following video on image optimization:

[video=youtube;EoxTNq-1Nak]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoxTNq-1Nak[/video]


10. Do Search Engines still care about Meta tags?

Google has officially disregard Meta Keywords tag (view video below) but Meta description tag is still important as it helps search engine to display relevant description in snippets at times.

[video=youtube;jK7IPbnmvVU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK7IPbnmvVU[/video]

Hope you find this useful! Please feel free to add in other official references =)

 

yaa that's really good

 

Yeah, thanks. I've learnt much from the 10 FAQs.

 

Can you explain us more about outgoing link keeping under 100.

Please share the link with us, if possible.

 

Very useful post! Post more like this if you have. Thank you!

 

ya ..that's a good ,really good FAQ , thanks

 

Link here:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

 

Really great thanks for sharing with us..

 

wow great....
regarding singapore topic - you should buy links from site hosted in singapore or with sg domain

 

hey thanks for sharing & putting all the Matt Cutts Videos in a place

 

Excellent post. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

Hopefully this post will aid in reducing the same questions from being posted over and over.

 

Excellent post. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

Hopefully this post will aid in reducing the same questions from being posted over and over.

 

Many Many thanks for this nice post

 

Very detailed and well thought out post. Thanks for sharing.

 

Great share specially for the video links.
Thanks