Top Ten SEO Tips

Over the years I have learned the hard way about how to carry out a successful seo campaign on any website, I have a variety of sites that cover a number of niches. The main thing I have learned over the years is that anything is possible as long as you have patience and do not take short cuts. I have narrowed down my top ten seo tips that website owners should abide by (please feel free to add your own):

1. The domain name:   Before you buy your domain name consider whether it is relevant to your chosen niche and relates to your chosen keywords. For example if your site related to super spider monkeys try and buy superspidermonkeys dot com. This is a benefit when you start your seo campaign as the search engines will already know you specialise in super spider monkeys.  Although it is a benefit to have your chosen keyword in your domain name it is not the be all and end all. A good example is the affiliate site named here.org.uk that ranks very well for affiliate key terms without using the keyword affiliate in it’s domain name.
2. The sites design:  When you design your site it is important that it is search engine friendly from the very beginning. I have seen countless sites that have the prettiest designs fall short in the search engines through poor design. For example ensure you use text links to each page of your site and not images because search engines can not read images and therefor do not read your anchor text. If you use a text link instead search engines can read your anchor text and know the page your link points to is about super spider monkeys.
3. Page title/Alt text/header tags: It is essential that your on page seo is up to scratch because it may give you the edge over your competitors. Make sure your title tags contain your target keywords, make sure you have alt tags on all of your images and that they are relevant to your pages content. When laying out your pages make sure you use header tags to a) tell your readers what is important and b) tells the search engines what the page is about. For example you would use a H1 header tag to display the main message of your page, for example super spider monkey and a H2 tag for Super spider monkey food.
4. Optimise every page of your site: It is important to remember every page of your site is a possible landing page (the point of entry from the search engines). So make sure each page has unique content relating to the chosen keyword for your page and make sure each page has a unique title tag and unique content that is aimed primarily at your readers and not the search engines (your readers are your bread and butter remember!).
5. Site-maps: A good sitemap has two main positive attributes. The first is that if built properly users will be able to navigate your site easily and secondly it can allow search engines to crawl/spider your sites content. There are two main types of sitemap that are essential to any good seo campaign. The first is a html sitemap, this is a normal html page which lists links to the pages on your site. A html site-map is usually used to aid navigation around your site but is also used by search engines like Yahoo to spider and index your pages. The second type of site-map is an xml site map, this is a useful tool that is used by search engines such as google to spider/cache your site. This type of site-map can also be submitted to Google webmaster tools so you can track your sites progress using their tools.
6. Content: I don’t care what anybody else says, but content is and always will be King (you have probably heard this a thousand times before). The reason content is important is that search engines love a site that is fresh and full of useful content, it is also essential if you want to attract visitors and keep them coming back for more (nobody wants to arrive at a site to see the last time it was updated was three months ago). Also if you have useful and unique content other webmasters are more likely to link to you!
7. Relevant links: Google webmaster guidelines clearly state that to improve your search engine rankings you should have other relevant sites link to yours. The key is to keep it relevant, don’t accept links from any old site. This takes more time but you will reap the rewards in the long term.
8. Anchor text: When other sites link to your site the words they show with your link is called the anchor text. For example this link online affiliate programs points to our home page. The anchor text relates to our sites keywords and is therefor telling the search engines what our homepage is all about. It is essential that anchor text is relevant to your chosen keywords, but be warned do not use the same anchor text with every link as search engines will think you are trying to directly manipulate their results (this is a form of spamming).
9. Patience: SEO is not a race, it takes time and patience. It is only natural that you want to reach the top of the search engines in the shortest amount of time, but the fact of the matter is this will probably get you banned from them. Search engine algorithms are based on natural linking factors, so you need to collect links ethically over a sustained period of time. This means you must avoid any thing that seems to good to be true - for example a link scheme that gets you hundreds of links in one go or any thing automated is a real no no. Also ignore any body who guarantees top spots (especially in a ridiculously short time).
10. Repeat:  It is important to remember tips 6 and 7, these are steps that you will repeat over and over again. It is essential to create more unique content than your competitors. This will keep your pages fresh and will attract search engines to cache and index your site more often, it will also encourage visitors to return to your sites more often.

That’s about all I have for today, I hope you have found these tips useful and as mentioned before please feel free to post some of your own.

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