If you’re confused already about search engine optimization, here are my
expert thoughts about search engine optimization in 2010, based on my
experience.
First off, before I go any further, I need to explain what I mean when I say
"search engine optimization" (SEO). It means getting your website noticed in the
search engines, in the “free” or “organic,” natural search results, not
pay-per-click (PPC), which is “search engine marketing,” where you have to pay
to be listed. That said, let’s get on with my list of issues with search engine
optimization that you need to be aware of.
On-page Factors
When it comes to SEO, it’s extremely important that your website is search
engine friendly. The search engines can crawl your website and find all of the
pages on the site. Each of these web pages contains unique content (enough
content so that the search engines can figure out what your web page is about).
Each web page must have generally accepted “best practices” applied to it, which
includes:
•A proper title tag.
•Proper meta tags, including a meta description tag and a meta keywords tag.
•Proper use of .css style sheets, headings and sub headings, and SEO friendly
navigation.
•No hidden text or content that’s not viewable by humans.
•Good use of internal anchor text, which is the text that you use to link to
other web pages on your site. It needs to describe what you’re linking to. For
example, if I link to the “search engine marketing services” page, the link text
should be “search engine marketing services” or something equally appropriate.
•Proper internal link structure, which includes having more links to your most
important web pages.
•Proper use of URLs (i.e., search engine friendly URLs), which includes using
keywords in the URL. Don’t use parameters, do rewrite the URLs whenever
possible.
•Adding good, on-topic content on a regular basis to your site. This can be in
the form of articles, a blog, news items, new videos, PDFs, a message board, a
directory, a glossary of terms, press releases, and other content. The most
important idea here is to keep adding content and growing your site, not just
leaving it alone to be a static site.
There are a lot of other important on-page factors, and you can review the
latest search engine ranking factors, for example, that are important. There
really isn’t enough time here to cover everything that’s important. For now,
let’s move onto the search engine optimization off-page factors.
Off-page Factors
There are also things you can do off-page to promote your site beyond adding
content and optimizing web pages. The first order of business is to get your
site “trusted” by the search engines (mainly Google). There are several things
you can do to get trusted, which includes doing a few press releases and
distributing them through the proper distribution channels, as well as getting a
few important directory listings, such as Yahoo! Directory, Best of the Web,
dmoz, Business.com, and others