Dear DP members, A I have recently creating a full guide to search engine optimization (too add to my recnet thread 10 search engine optimization tips). This is 1 part of my "website business model" I have rencetly created on my website. (more on that later) (It has a focus for newbie's but a lot of good stuff for the more able as well) Here it is for you, stripped down to the bones for easy access: Key-words: The most effective way for a search engine to locate your site is by having the right key-words. You need to include the exact words that are best associated with your particular website and relevent posts. For example, this post is about search engine optimization, so as you can see that phrase has been included a high number of times. If someone typed those exact key-words into a search engine such as google, it will scan all the sites it has indexed and look for the most relevent on that specific search. The more times I have the key-words search engine optimization written in this article, the higher chance a search engine will think my site is relevent to that search and therefore rank me accordingly. Do not over do this as google's spider bot will think you are creating spam, have a good balance for a well written post is essential, they have a really good tool to see if your post has been wrote for search engine optimization or if it has been wrote for the reader...try to keep your key-words between 3/7 per 100 words. Title: You should include the exact key-words in your title name that you want to rank highest on and be between 3-7 words, so for example if your website is about dog walking and you want people to find your site from the search: How to do Dog walking - That itself would the perfect name you could use for the title. Webmaster tools: Google offers a free programme to help with search engine optimization. This programme basically allows you to list your website URL's and in effect - let google know you exists. Only once google knows you exist will they "crawl" your site with their spiders to know your about and how they want to rank you. URL: Your website address should be the same as your website title. This again will help confirm to search engines how relevent your website is. For example My website is called "How To Make Money Online", therefore my URL www.makemoneyonline-advice.blogspot.com is fitting. Even more ideal would be www.makemoneyonline.com but obviously that is already taken. If you can buy a more relevent domain then all the better but if not, try to be as accurate as possible. (if you want to buy a domain a good website is godaddy.com) Post Title: Each post you make should include the main key-words you of your subject, for example this post is called "search engine optimization", as that is what I am writing about. Bold Keywords: Bold the keywords for added effect. This will make you even more identifiable for search engines and boost your SE ranking. If you want to be really good, bold the key words at the start and end of your article as that's were a search engine will look first. Keyword Placement on content: Google will look at your page much like a someone who views your site will, searching from the top right to the bottom left. With that in mind, the best placement key-words is the first sentence asap. Although towards the end of your article having key words is not as effective (NOT useless - just not as effective), having key words right at the end is effective as its also a profound area. Paragraphs: Try to keep your paragraphs a good normal length, this will help a search engine read your site better and increase the chance of making them believe your site is more relevent Anchor Text: This is basically the words used that link to another URL. For the best benefit of any backlink you need to have the exact anchor text. The text needs to include key-words of whatever your linking to. An example would be this post, ideally I would use “search engine optimization†as the Anchor text. If you don’t do this the SEO benefit will be small. It is also good practise every 1/10 times with the not so important backlink, change the name slightly to avoid any search engine spam bots Internal Links: This is very usefl yet there are still many websites that don't do it. Having is internal links very effective search engine optimization. Every link you create internally is like having a equal backlink. Just make sure you use the right anchor text as mentioned in point 1, otherwise this exercise is pointless. (A good example is Wikipedia, I wonder how many they have...) Meta-Tags: The value of meta-tags is often now thought to be very small, while that may be true as it's still worth doing. You will not be discredited by google for having one, therefore there is no reason why you should not use them. H1/H2/H3 Tags: Many people also believe they have little value but many believe they have a strong value. By adding the code <*h1> Title <*/h> (with out the * - only there so you can see it) they effective highlight to a search engine that this is your main key word/phrase. Personally I only use them on my "main search engine" pages as they can make your site look ugly. I have added a very short and simple guide on how to use them below: H1 : Post title key words - E.g for this post title: <*h1>Search Engine Optimization</h1> (take out the *) H2 : In context main key word - E.g - Cant show E.g as I have adapted this page for DP - this was originally done on my site H3: Main Points in post - E.g Cant show E.g as I have adapted this page for DP - this was originally done on my site Pages/Site Age: The longer your site has been around, the more "like-able" you are to search engines. The same goes for the quantity of pages on your site. Just remember not quantity before quality - there is a reason I put content as the first section of this series and that's because it's the most important. Backlinks: A link directed to your site, the more of you have, the more valued a search engine will believe you are. There are many ways to build backlinks and it is also the 3rd step in my "Website Business Model" (I have provided a link at the end of this article so carry on reading for now) Subject Relevant Link Exchange: A L-E is basically where you provide a link to a site in return for the same. For anyone starting out this can be one of the best ways to get more backlinks. The most important thing for maximum search engine optimization benefit is linking with a site of the same topic as you, otherwise the exercise is almost pointless. Sandbox - The google sandbox effect does exist, this is basically the term used to describe the time period before you get indexed. As I said there are some factor's that we don't know about search engine optimization and this is one of them. The reason why is generally unknown, but in essence remember this: Be patient, keep doing all these tips and it will eventually happen. Until then your patience will be your biggest asset. Quality Link Exchange: The bigger the traffic the website that you link with, the better effect it will have on your own search engine rank. Think of it this way, if you were linked by MSN at www.msn.com (yes I know it would never happen, but if...) then that is better link than a small time website with 50 visits a month. DoFollow: The concept of DoFollow is as clear as mud when search engine optimization is concerned. A DoFollow Site basically means if any outbound links on that site will be credited by a search engine or not. The function of this is to avoid spammers, an example is twitter. Twitter is NoFollow to reduce the amount of spam passed through tweets in order to keep it better to use for genuine users. In light of this, when creating a backlink you will need to do so on DoFollow sites. Do bare in mind this term is not definite, just because a site is DoFollow does not mean a link will 100% certainly be credited by a search engine as a backlink, it just means that is more likely. This also works the other way around as well. Pages/Site Age: The longer your site has been around, the more "like-able" you are to search engines. The same goes for the quantity of pages on your site. Just remember not quantity before quality - there is a reason I put content as the first section of this series and that's because it's the most important. If you are interested in The "website business model" I have created then feel free to check out it out here - Website Business Model. The final 2 posts should be up in the next few days or so. Hope you all find use in those Search Engine Optimization tips and wish you the best of luck. Feel free to ask as many questions as you like I shall try my best to help.
Thank you for spending the time to put this down in writing. You did a good job of summarizing complex topics into a couple of sentences. I agree with most of it but readers should be careful about taking everything as fact.
Thank you for the kind review, I must admit that was the biggest challenge in writing this article and why I spent so much time on it, I really wanted to focus on being crystal clear but in as few words as possible.
Providing broad idea into summarized content its a great work.....readers point of view...they can explore..
Great article to help SEO beginners. By the way, I won't use H3 tags for a SHORT article (less than 750 words!) Also nothing about Alt tags for images and Title for links
Good summarized content! Help newbies understand what's happening with their websites, good easy explanations for complex topics. Let's not forget there's a lot more of course.