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Quick Self-Defense Tips for Search Engine Visibility

What is SEO?

Search. Engine. Optimization. = SEO

SEO = How you make your site “findable”.

Focus on driving QUALIFIED visitors to your site who are LOOKING for your products,

services or content.

Find out how they are looking for your stuff and optimize what works where you can.

Some BasicsAbout Visitors

Web searchers are not random visitors.

They are actively seeking your products, services or content.

They are “self-qualified” leads.

There are millions upon millions of us...

Different Styles

There are 4 different types of search styles:1. Search Engines (Robots)2. Directories (Humans)3. Meta Engines (Meh...)

4. Paid Searches (PPC)

Relevance is Crucial

The core foundation for any SEO campaign starts with a website that has strong, relevant content. There is no secret recipe. There are no shortcuts. Spam is dangerous. If its too good to be true, then it probably is.

Organic Search Engines

Spiderability•Place important content in HTML text format

•Create a spiderable navigational structure•Don't force registration•Avoid using frames•Watch out for session IDs & cookies•Beware of "spider traps” (too many 301 or 302's)

Let’s get META

<title></title><meta name="description" content="” /><meta name="keywords"content="” / >

Wasting your time on the other stuff...

The Meta Tags

Meta descriptions have three primary uses:To describe the content of the page accurately and succinctlyTo serve as a short text "advertisement" to click on your results in the search results

The Title

The most important attribute in PageRank

•Limit length to 65 characters (including spaces) or lessIncorporate keyword phrasesUse a dividerBe consistentRepeat in the <h1>

Let’s chat about

It really is the only one that matters anymore.

•Page Rank•Guidelines•What NOT to do

What is PageRank

Google assigns a page a PageRank.This is based on the quality of links that link to your page.

or

Linking “The Linkerati”

Ask for a link & share a link (the Blogroll)

Participating in blog comments, forums, social networks, twitter - basically any online content.

It needs to be relevant participation, not spammy. Make yourself useful okay...

You must link and be linked to get the juice.

nofollow

rel='nofollow'

Are you leaking page juice?Pages are like a balloon filled with water, the more holes the faster you lose water. - seomoz

Links to pages with little or zero relevance to content make your PageRank suffer.

PageRank Sculpting works for the big 3: Yahoo, Google, & MSN

Guidelines

#1 Get a Google Webmaster Account!

Guidelines

Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at

least one static text link.

Site Architecture

Good website organization is good for people and robots.

Search engines do make use of relationships between pages and give value to content that has been organized properly. (AKA: semantics)

AJAX & Javascript

It’s cool right?

When it hides contentit’s bad for search enginesand humans.

Guidelines

Have a site map

1 for humans (HTML) & 1 for Google (XML)

Guidelines

Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your

content.

Guidelines

Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site

actually includes those words within it

Guidelines

Use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links.

What is this 1998?

Guidelines

Make sure that your <title> elements and alt attributes are descriptive and accurate.

Yes, use alt=”description” on stuff...

You have to have alt=”” for it to validate too...

...But be aware of accessibility issues.

Guidelines

Check for broken links and validate your HTML.

For this the W3C is very handy...

Or view your pages with the CSS turned off.

Guidelines

robots.txtUse robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming

from search engines.

Guidelines

Cloaking only good for Klingons...

Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you

display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."

Don't participate in link farms.

In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own

ranking may suffer.

Guidelines

Try not to use a program to do the work.

Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Guidelines

Target pages can be powerful tools when used correctly however...

Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches

such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

Guidelines

Submit the site: google.com/addurl/

Guidelines

Resources

Websites:searchenginewatch.comseomoz.org