Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites may be the talk of the town, but that does not discount power of the punch that comes packed in the first page ranking in any of the 3 major search engines, particularly Google. Regardless of all the hoopla, traffic from search engine is still the holy grain in 2011. SEO in 2011 is still relevant.
And once you have a fair understanding of these SEO secrets, you can either apply these to your business by yourself, or hire a virtual assistant to do the SEO tasks for you.
- 1. Limit the Use of JavaScript on your page, but when it becomes almost impossible to remove JavaScript from the drop-down menu, image links, or image maps then make sure that you have text links to all those pages at some place on your website. These are the links and not the JavaScript ones which search spiders will follow.
- A lot has been said, read, heard, and proclaimed about PageRank, but it is nothing more than an oft-quoted snippet of the Google search algorithm. It does matter, but not so much to outrank all non-PR pages. Many times a well-optimized page outranks a webpage with high PR in Google SERP. So do not be too fanatical about it.
- Virtual home of ABC Company Ltd. is not the ideal title tag to go for. You cannot even buy a pint with this kind of title tags, and repeating such tags on all your pages means nothing more than piling up of SEO sins. Make sure you provide a unique keyword-rich title tag to all the web pages in your website.
- If you feel guilty when leaving out your company’s name from the title tag then you can use it towards the end of the title tag preceded by a pipe sign (Keyword-rich Title Tag| Your Company Name).
- Content, content, content, and content. Do you want me to repeat this some more times to make you understand how important high-quality, keyword-rich, relevant content is for the success of your SEO campaign? High-quality content is the absolute must for SEO — insider news is Google is going to bring a major change in its search algorithm which will push the website with low-quality content down to the bottom, if not flush them at all. So, no more auto blogging for 2011.
- When it comes to building back links, slow and steady wins the race. Build as many backlinks as you can, but go slow. Google can tell from a distance if the links are on dope (artificially built), and do it every day. Google loves continuity, breaking it will mean you are not such a good sport, and no one loves that. Not even Google.
- Do not chase every “link celeb” (backlink), some links are more celebrated then others. Links from authority sites, EDU domain, GOV domains, and high-PR websites are like MJ (Michael Jackson) of backlinking world. Chase them, and let the struggling aspirants (lesser known backlink sources) struggle for their bread.
- Links from within your website will make life easy for search bots, so they always reward the website with better internal linking structure. Do not discount the value of keyword-rich internal linking. It delivers.
- Search spiders are busy people. They keep on scanning millions of pages full of words and phrases, most of which are duplicate and stale. They do not like taste of stale food (content). Provide them fresh and tasty (read relevant) content every day, and they will come to your website for feast. It will mean better ranking for you.
- Google is huge and so is its ego. Do not downplay Google (or even Yahoo! and Bing) by designing a website first and then thinking of search engine optimization. Always think of SEO first then of including any element in your web design. Too many flash and AJAX will strip your website off the opportunity to get indexed. These content are opaque.
- If Flash and/or AJAX are must for your website then you must have new-generation Flash and AJAX, which is not as fortified behind the strong walls as were earlier ones. Google bots now can access these.
- Always remember ALT Tag. This is the only way to make search spiders make sense of those cool graphics on your page. You must attach keyword-rich ALT tag to all the images on your website.
- Use keyword-rich descriptive caption in your image. This plays an important role in getting your image indexed for your keyword.
- Make description tag interesting enough to excite people to click on the link. SEO will not be of much use if the visitors do not click on your result in SERP, and only a compelling description can guarantee that.
- Do not insert primary keyword more than once in description tag. Use secondary and/or tertiary keywords instead.
- Local search is going to be the next battle ground. If you sever one particular market then include the name of the city in the keyword, for example: San Antonio web design, New York SEO, etc.
- Jumping between using http://, http://www., www., and now-www version of your domain names will dilute your link building effort. Use your domain name consistently when building backlinks to your website. For example, if you have been using http://www.YourDomain.com then stick to that and refrain from using www.YourDomain.com or http://yourdomain.com or http://www.YourDomain.com/index.html in your backlinks. Google consider each of the three above described domain names as separate websites, so consistency is must.
- You must add rel=canonical to your domains or use 301 redirect to tell Google which domain to list.
- Do not use frames. They are quite bad for SEO.
- In SEO, regardless of what self-confessed SEO Gurus say — it includes even those who have just returned from Himalayas (read Google den) — the file extension in an URL doesn’t matter. Use .HTML, .HTM, .PHP, .ASP, or whatever file type you feel is suitable for your website.
- Getting the new website indexed by Google is a tricky affair. Regular submission can take weeks if not months before your website starts appearing in search results. There is a shortcut to get indexed fast and that is to get a backlink from high-quality website.
- Write high-quality press releases and submit it to high PR press release directories. Include relevant links in the release and give 110-140-word gap between two links.
- Article marketing is never dead. It is a great source of getting high PR authority backlink.
- Ride on the popularity of established blogs. Write high-quality guest posts for them, and use your signature to get visitors. And when you do so, make sure that the landing page, page on the other side of the links, are relevant for the readers of that blog. You should also include a subscription box on the landing page to convert visitors into subscribers.
- Quality is always better than quantity. Do not go after thousands of PR0 links, a handful of backlinks from authority websites and PR5+ websites will be enough.
- Add blog to your domain and post new articles/blog posts at least thrice a week. This will give search bots enough fodder to munch on.
- Use your main keyword in all important HTML tags (H1, H2, H3, bold, italic, etc.). But do not over do it. Do not make bold all the instances of a keyword, do it just once.
- Use your primary keyword in the first 50 words of your article. Make sure it comes as early as possible. But keep readability in mind. Stuffing keywords will not give you higher ranking.
- Keep an eye on the bounce rate, and minimize the bounce rate by providing a website with an uncluttered design, clear navigation, and high-quality keyword-focused content.
- Make sure your keyword-rich backlink is surrounded by related terms. The text around your link should be related to the keyword in the anchor text. Her Highness never travels alone. She is always with her folks.
- Do not go to the hiding, it will make you look a thief. The domain which does not disclose ownership information in WHOIS could be considered SPAM by Google. You should not go for a privacy registration, unless you are someone who wants to stay under cover, come what may.
- When using a shared hosting for your website, you must check the neighborhood you are going to live in. A neighborhood (read server) which is shared by proxy spammers and banned websites should be avoided. It will affect your ranking. You may cry innocence, but it will fall on deaf ears.
- Do not just add blog to your domain and write posts, but optimize each one of them with a keyword, may be long-tail ones, if all of the short tailed ones are taken. When doing so do not forget to optimize title tags of each blog post independent of blog’s title tag.
- It sounds stupid, but the speed at which your website loads is one of the 250 factors on which Google ranks a website. Everyone loves agility, even machines (Google bots).
- Another thing that does not look so important but affects ranking immensely is website usability. Make your navigation flatter, and website easy to use, as complicated website does not impress anyone, not even a philosopher or Google.
- Love grows exponentially when shared freely. What make you think it is not so with link love? The more you will give (link out to other domains) the more you will get (backlinks from good domains), so share your link love.
- You feel pang of regret for not using that sleek flash or that cool picture on your homepage than make sure that you have text links below it, in below the fold area.
- Get backlinks from .EDU and .GOV websites for your domain. These are highly esteemed in the eyes of Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, as well as other search engines.
- Do not go crazy by attaching too many keywords to one page. Do not over-optimize your website, and do not optimize one page for more than one keyword, it will dilute the overall ranking. Focus the content to one single keyword in all your off-page activities.
- Keep your backlinks natural. Do not use the same anchor text in all the backlinks. It looks so artificial. Let some links go nude, and some have other keywords.
- If you are out fishing for the links than make sure you have good baits. Create attractive linkbaits. You can have a list post like this, an infographic, or a video, or a survey for the linkbait. The better a bait is the higher number of links you will get.
- Optimize your RSS feed content using keyword-rich title tag, and eye-catching description.
- In a blog post, add category keywords and other relevant terms as tags. This will get indexed by Google.
- Create context for links and images on your site. Surround the images and links on your website with content relevant to the ALT tag and caption of the image and anchor text of the link, respectively.
- Add both XML and HTML sitemaps to your website. You must generate XML sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.
- Add video to your website, submit it to YouTube, and optimize it with relevant tags and descriptions. Video often appears towards the top of the search result.
- Create documents like PDF, DOC, and PPT files and submit it to free document sharing sites. It will add versatility to your backlinking effort.
- Include strong call-to-action in your meta description tag. You should also ask users to post comments, if you have a blog. This will add fresh content to your website without any extra effort.
- Install comment to post plug-in for your WordPress blog. This will get your comments indexed as pages, which means more listing in search results.
- Image search is going big on Google, you should, therefore, assist Google bots index all images on your website by enabling “enhanced image search” ion your Google Webmaster Central account.
- If I get to conclude what SEO is in four words than I will say: content, links, popularity, authority. All of them in the given order.
- Useful SEO Tips
When doing SEO always remember that it is not a one-shot process and it takes time before your efforts can start producing results. Hence, you need to have some patience.
Second thing that I would like to tell is about call to action. No matter how well-optimized your website is if there is not a strong and consistent call to action, all your effort will be wasted. You must include a strong call to action in your content.
When done patiently and for a period of time, SEO gives you more result than any pay per click (PPC) campaign can give. And unlike PPC, in SEO there is no additional cost for getting one extra visitor. Once set, SEO does wonder. It produces trustworthy result.
