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The 7 Points of Do-It-Yourself SEO
By Gordon Goodfellow
Ever felt intimidated at the convoluted, jargon-ridden information about Internet marketing for small businesses available on the Net? Ever been horrified by the huge fees
the experts charge, putting search engine optimization beyond your own means? Ever thought: What exactly is
search engine optimization anyway, and can I do it myself?
The answer is: Yes, you can! The basics of search engine
optimisation in applied web marketing are simple. It's all to
do with the keyword content of your text copy, and can be
summarised in seven points.
1. Register a good domain name which reflects what your
site is about. Even if you are an established business, don't
register www.FredJones.com if you make widgets. Rather,
you want to register something like www.BestWidgets.com
because that would inspire confidence in people looking
for quality widgets who would not necessarily have heard
of Fred Jones the widget-maker.
2. Name your page URLs based on reasons similar to the
above for your web promotion, except now you can be
more specific. Search engines like to know what your page
is about. Name a page after a product
(BigYellowWidgets.htm) or a service or action (Buy-
Widgets-by-Post.htm) on one of the sales pages.
3. The text in the title tag is crucial in letting search engines
know what each page is about. Put your important
keywords in your title tags, using both the singular and
plural versions (people will search for both) and make
these tags different and specific for each page. For
example, "Widgets and After Sales Widget Services".
Whatever you do, don't call the home page "Index", but
treat it almost as a mini-description.
4. The other tags (at the top of the html page) between the
two "HEAD" tags are not as important as the title tag, but
the description tag is still used by some search engines in
displaying what you would like web users to see when they
scroll down a page of search results. Some search
engines don't use the description tag at all; others, like
Google, sometimes use part of it together with part of the
main body text surrounding prominent keywords on your
page. So you may as well treat the description tag
seriously; make it brief (about 25 to 30 words) and as
comprehensive as possible in the short space allowed.
Make sure you have your popular keywords included
within your description tag. The ALT tag is used for a very
short description of an image or graphic file, and is what is
displayed if you allow your mouse pointer to hover above a
graphic. These days it is not considered important for
search engines. The COMMENT tag is never displayed on
the body page, and is used by coders and designers as an
instruction or reminder to themselves about what that
section of html coding should be doing; in the past, some
webmasters in their quest for website promotion and
search engine ranking used to stuff keywords in the
comments tags, but now it is generally acknowledged that
the main search engines pay little or no attention to these.
5. Keyword density. Each search engine has its own
preference as to how many times a keyword phrase
appears on the page in order to signify the relevance of
that keyword phrase (in other words, in order to help the
search engine understand what the page is about). Around
5 to 8 per cent is a rough guide as to the optimal level.
Don't overdo it, otherwise it will be seen as spam or
keyword-stuffing. Also use your keywords in the headings
tags H1 and H2. There is an H3 tag as well, but it is
doubtful whether search engines bother with that, as it is
perceived as less prominent on the page, therefore less
relevant to what the page is about.
6. Don't forget good linking in your website marketing.
Search engines will judge the importance of your web
pages to some extent on the number and quality of
incoming links from other sites. Ask other webmasters with
sites on similar themes to yours for a link, in exchange for
a link back. These sites should not be in competition with
yours, but should be similarly themed. You may
occasionally be asked by other webmasters if they can link
to your site. If this is so then have a look at their site; make
sure that their site is relevant, that it has at least some
Page Rank, and that it just "feels" good, and has no nasty
surprises like redirects or unexpected popups. You don't
want to be associated with a "bad neighborhood"!
7. Make sure that important keywords are included in the
anchor text within inbound links from other sites. This is
crucial to search engines when they try to figure out the
relevance and importance of your pages. The inbound link
from the other site should take the form of something like
this (I'm using normal brackets instead of angle brackets
so as not to use compromising html): (A
HREF="http://www.Yoursite.com") your important keywords
included here(/A). You should definitely avoid something
like (A HREF="http://www.Yoursite.com")click here(/A),
which tells search engines nothing except that your site is
about "click here". Be careful!
About the Author
Gordon Goodfellow is an Internet marketing consultant and practitioner. He lives and Works in London, UK, and has helped companies in many industry sectors with clients worldwide. His main site is http://www.applied-web-marketing.com
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/12296.html
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