[John Michael Sales]

Here's a short 20 Tips and Tricks

20 SEO Tips and Tricks

1. Branding the Domain
- Domain name should be simple but keyword-rich and easy to remember. It should contain your branding.

2. Keyword is a key.
- Good keywords will bring well targeted traffic to your website. Think for words which a prospect visitor may type in a search box. Most good keyword phrases are generally 2 to 5 words. Use your home page to target your primary keyword and use the other pages to target other keyword phrases. Place your keywords in the paragraphs, heading tags and img alt tags.

3. Less is More
- Focus on the quality of content more than the quantity.

4. Be Consistent
- Be consistent with your site design. People expect to see things in certain places. The upper left corner usually has a logo, and a link to your home page. (Often times the logo is the link.) Search is either right beneath it or in the upper right hand corner. The most important thing is that people like to feel comfortable.

5. The Home
- Target your most competitive keyword phrase with the home page. Link to your home page from every page of your site. Include your home page’s primary keyword phrase in the text links pointing at it.

6. The Navigation
- Use text based navigation. If you use graphic navigation, use descriptive alt text for your image links. Another workaround for graphic navigation is using image-text replacement with css.

7. The Sitemap
- Use a site map to help search engines spider through your site.

8. Halt the Long Alt
- Don't use the img alt tag with long random strings. This will only confused the search engines.

9. LinkIn and Out
- Exchange links with similar websites. Be sure to review the site before exchanging links. Exchanging links with site without good content is a sure downfall.

10. Building your links

- Participate in forums which provide signature text links with your posts. Issue press releases with links into your site. Write articles and get them syndicated at other sites.

11. Get Listed
- Submit your site to many different directories. The value of a single directory link is usually not very great. Directories add lots of value after you list in many of them, especially if you use various descriptive anchor text combinations.

12. Writing Testimonials for Links
- A good testimonial almost requires they post a link to your site. There are two main tips about writing testimonials: who to write a testimonial for and how to write that testimonial. Only promote stuff that you would be glad to throw your name and reputation on. Use concrete phrases and terms that make the service sound exceptional.

13. Comparing Search Results
- Different search engines weigh different parts of their algorithms differently. They can all have similarly relevancy while having significantly different search results. Google is primarily focused on anchor text and link popularity. Yahoo! focuses a bit more on “on the page” content (while still relying a decent amount on link popularity). Teoma(Ask Jeeves) is focused on local communities.

14. Anchor Text
- It is the single most important element in Google’s current algorithm and is worth far more than PageRank alone. When linking between your documents you should use descriptive words in your anchor text.

15. Link Popularity
- By registering your sites at many different directories and getting many related sites to link to your site makes your link popularity at the top of the search.

16. Local Communities
- Find ways to embed yourself in the correct local communities to list well for competitive terms like registering your site in local directories.

17. Buy Pay Per Click
- Buying pay-per-click ads from search engines like Google (AdWords), Yahoo (Search Marketing), and Microsoft (adCenter) allows you to see what keywords have the ability to drive traffic to your site.

18. The Landing Page (Pay Per Click Links)
- Link into the exact page of your site you want visitors to see and not to your home page. By channeling all your traffic through the home page you may be telling a person that you do not care about them, and making it harder for them to convert into a sale.

19. Checking Your Competitors' Match (Pay Per Click Match)
- Check you competitors' ads if they're advertising via broad, phrase or exact match. Knowing this helps determine what match to invest with your keywords.

20. Don't Wear Black Hats
- Using black hats like hidden text or cloacking may remove your site from search engines' search index.

[TopShopper]

Thanks,
That's really useful.

[hosting456]

Hi,

Thanks for sharing the information.

Use keywords in text

In order to target keywords in searches, use the same keywords in the text.
For example, an article on Web Standards-based layout will use the keywords
design and standards and layout instead of using architecture and templates.
However, using the keywords repeatedly does not help either.

[brilliantfreelancer]

Helpfull Post !

[James Mary]

Hey Thanks for such a very useful seo tips,Really it was a good attempt to make people learn about seo.

[mindbees]

Thanks mate !

Good info..

[thefandango]

Sorry, but I have to take issue with a lot of this. I hate to pull it apart like this, but you are simply misinforming people.


1. Branding the Domain
- Domain name should be simple but keyword-rich and easy to remember. It should contain your branding.
Not true anymore and has not been for some time with regards to the keywords in domain name. Branding may be a factor although how Google's views brands is still not 100% clear.

2. Keyword is a key.
- Good keywords will bring well targeted traffic to your website. Think for words which a prospect visitor may type in a search box. Most good keyword phrases are generally 2 to 5 words. Use your home page to target your primary keyword and use the other pages to target other keyword phrases. Place your keywords in the paragraphs, heading tags and img alt tags.
img alt tags do not count towards on page SEO, although they do count for image searching. Why use your homepage to target your main keyword? There is no valid reason to do this on your home page more than any other page. Finally you missed the absolute crucial tag - the title tag.

3. Less is More
- Focus on the quality of content more than the quantity.
Hmm, not wholly true. The more content you have that is relevant the more pages will rank and the more power your internal links will gain, lifting the whole site - just look at wikipedia.

4. Be Consistent
- Be consistent with your site design. People expect to see things in certain places. The upper left corner usually has a logo, and a link to your home page. (Often times the logo is the link.) Search is either right beneath it or in the upper right hand corner. The most important thing is that people like to feel comfortable.
Nothing to do with SEO whatsoever. This is usability.

5. The Home
- Target your most competitive keyword phrase with the home page. Link to your home page from every page of your site. Include your home page’s primary keyword phrase in the text links pointing at it.
Good, but again, no there is no compelling reason to target your most competitive word on your hompepage.

6. The Navigation
- Use text based navigation. If you use graphic navigation, use descriptive alt text for your image links. Another workaround for graphic navigation is using image-text replacement with css.
Usability, not SEO.

7. The Sitemap
- Use a site map to help search engines spider through your site.
Agreed. However, look at the top ten results of any Google search using a plugin such as SEO for firefox and see how many have a sitemap at all - usually less than 20%.

8. Halt the Long Alt
- Don't use the img alt tag with long random strings. This will only confused the search engines.
Not relevant to onpage SEO from the latest evidence. Optimizes image search yes.

9. LinkIn and Out
- Exchange links with similar websites. Be sure to review the site before exchanging links. Exchanging links with site without good content is a sure downfall.
Try not to exchange links at all! Build one way links, not reciprocal ones. Also, relevancy has now been proven to be a red herring. Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz said earlier this month that despite all the testing they have done they have found no evidence whatsoever that relevant links are more powerful than good quality non-relevant links.

10. Building your links

- Participate in forums which provide signature text links with your posts. Issue press releases with links into your site. Write articles and get them syndicated at other sites.
Forum links are very, very low value links, forums are better seen as place to market, not for gettin a link through signatures. This forum for example is NOFOLLOW.

11. Get Listed
- Submit your site to many different directories. The value of a single directory link is usually not very great. Directories add lots of value after you list in many of them, especially if you use various descriptive anchor text combinations.
Totally, 100% rubbish. Spammy little directories are virtually ignored by Google. They may devalue or never bother finding the link. IF you list in loads of directories you are also breaking the golden rules of LINK DIVERSITY and are putting your site in danger of a slap. Submit to Yahoo, Dmoz, BOTW and a handful of the other biggest directories and then forget the rest.

12. Writing Testimonials for Links
- A good testimonial almost requires they post a link to your site. There are two main tips about writing testimonials: who to write a testimonial for and how to write that testimonial. Only promote stuff that you would be glad to throw your name and reputation on. Use concrete phrases and terms that make the service sound exceptional.
Not an SEO tip, this is marketing.

13. Comparing Search Results
- Different search engines weigh different parts of their algorithms differently. They can all have similarly relevancy while having significantly different search results. Google is primarily focused on anchor text and link popularity. Yahoo! focuses a bit more on “on the page” content (while still relying a decent amount on link popularity). Teoma(Ask Jeeves) is focused on local communities.
This is analysis, not SEO.

14. Anchor Text
- It is the single most important element in Google’s current algorithm and is worth far more than PageRank alone. When linking between your documents you should use descriptive words in your anchor text.
Agreed.

15. Link Popularity
- By registering your sites at many different directories and getting many related sites to link to your site makes your link popularity at the top of the search.
Utter nonsense. The majority of the sites at the top of the SERP's actually have few links, but what they do have is powerful links from trusted sources - have a read about TrustRank.

16. Local Communities
- Find ways to embed yourself in the correct local communities to list well for competitive terms like registering your site in local directories.
Not sure how this is SEO.

17. Buy Pay Per Click
- Buying pay-per-click ads from search engines like Google (AdWords), Yahoo (Search Marketing), and Microsoft (adCenter) allows you to see what keywords have the ability to drive traffic to your site.
Hmm, this is really analysis.

18. The Landing Page (Pay Per Click Links)
- Link into the exact page of your site you want visitors to see and not to your home page. By channeling all your traffic through the home page you may be telling a person that you do not care about them, and making it harder for them to convert into a sale.
No idea what this means.

19. Checking Your Competitors' Match (Pay Per Click Match)
- Check you competitors' ads if they're advertising via broad, phrase or exact match. Knowing this helps determine what match to invest with your keywords.
Nothing to do with SEO. this is PPC.

20. Don't Wear Black Hats
- Using black hats like hidden text or cloacking may remove your site from search engines' search index.
Agreed, but dont be afraid of using natural hidden text, like in click to show/hide FAQ's etc.

[TopShopper]

Great Thread. Thanks for starting it.

[bocaj]

I have to agree with thefandango's commentary. In regards too

Quote

16. Local Communities
- Find ways to embed yourself in the correct local communities to list well for competitive terms like registering your site in local directories.
Not sure how this is SEO.

This is geotargeted seo, improved local map results etc. Although i did some small testing, and off site local links didn't impact too much on local listing compared to use of things like meta geo and <address>


Local links are unlikely to have much seo impact, although probably improved local consumer click throughs.

[janeyardy]

Hey man you have really blow the secret out by sharing this very useful points with us..Thanks

[rgbdzine]

Pretty nice information you have shared... Thanks for the post. Keep on posting.

_____________________________________
web design company india

[knightofdawn]

Thanks,Great share Bro...

[SandersDesign]

insightful post. Good point with regards using forums to market (also build contacts) and not for SEO.

[BlueDreamer]

I haven't seen anyone mention customer focussed text copy, calls to action and carewords - whoops, "SEO's" haven't discovered "carewords" yet, I'm giving secrets away

This post has been edited by BlueDreamer: 27 October 2009 - 12:35 PM

[S3 Web Design]

I do feel the fandango is a bit harsh - usability does have relevance, you should be optimising for both search engines AND visitors. If your website is wonderfully SEO'd but visitors don't stick around because it is too confusing to use your website then the SEO is pointless.

And just one point re alt tags and title tags, they are important for disability accessibility and are an opportunity for you to use key phrases. I would make sure they are all completed.

[Frantic Fish]

I'm with thefandango; posting lists like this isn't that helpful for new users because a lot of the stuff in there isn't that black and white, even if it is right - and some of it is just plain wrong. What would be helpful would be to provide a list of 20 great articles on SEO; how to do keyword research, how to write content, how to structure your site, how to optimise your pages, how to look for quality links, links to avoid, techniques to avoid. These regurgitated lists that circulate only help to start myths.

Here's my top 5 SEO tips:

1) Read the Experts
Type 'SEO' into Google and pay attention to the people at the top for that term.
Read their tutorials and lists.
2) Analyse the Top Rankings
It's not that easy to reverse engineer Google, but they are showing you the sites they like best for any term.
Crunch through citation profiles (not just links) until your eyes hurt, look for common factors.
Look at the content on the top sites. What are they doing?
3) Test
Put what you're learning into practice.
4) Record Everything.
If you don't know exactly what you've done, how can you begin to guess what was effective?
5) Observe & Analyse
What results have you achieved?
What are your visitors doing? What pages do they like? What links do they click?

[matlamont]

thefandango, on 20 October 2009 - 04:51 PM, said:

Sorry, but I have to take issue with a lot of this. I hate to pull it apart like this, but you are simply misinforming people.


1. Branding the Domain
- Domain name should be simple but keyword-rich and easy to remember. It should contain your branding.
Not true anymore and has not been for some time with regards to the keywords in domain name. Branding may be a factor although how Google's views brands is still not 100% clear.

Hmmm i beg to differ on this point. Iv'e been using market samurai for some weeks now and this clearly shows that keyword domains rock! Simple as

[S3 Web Design]

I agree - proper keyword consideration with regard to titles headers, link text is important - make sure your link text has the key words for the destination page. Thefandango is wrong so wrong - keywords in your domain name, your URLs , your link text and TITLE are so important! Just go look at the Google info!! plus study it, alter yours and see what effect it has.

Within 5 months of starting we had 6 sitelinks under Google for our company despite there being a company of the same name in CA, USA!!! for the same thing of course!

[a.g.r.c]

Thank you for the post. Very useful.

[Frantic Fish]

Yep, Google favours keyword domains - absurdly so. If you have the natural keyword domain for your key phrase you have a MAJOR advantage over everyone else.

Recently re-launched a keyword domain. It has two links - one from the business' old site (business name in url), and one from it's sister site (another keyword domain, the other side of the business). One page site and it was 1st in Google within a week for a useful term - 'widget service town' let's say. Outranks bigger, older sites and the manufacturer (household name) site too.

[STWebDesign]

Good post! Thank You

[thefandango]

How does it show they rock? Please explain so I can shoot you out of the sky like a bi-plane.

matlamont, on 13 November 2009 - 03:53 PM, said:

Hmmm i beg to differ on this point. Iv'e been using market samurai for some weeks now and this clearly shows that keyword domains rock! Simple as

[matlamont]

thefandango, on 17 November 2009 - 02:37 PM, said:

How does it show they rock? Please explain so I can shoot you out of the sky like a bi-plane.

Because i see it with my own eyes it aint rocket science but seems your the freaking expert you explain why it doesnt?

[KieranA]

thefandango, on 17 November 2009 - 02:37 PM, said:

How does it show they rock? Please explain so I can shoot you out of the sky like a bi-plane.

He said it works for him/his business therefore for his individual case they do rock. It doesn't need to be globally recognised on every scale of site to "rock" - some search engines may use this more than others, don't disregard something because it's not on a popular search engine - It gets him clients therefore he has every right to say it rocks. Remember the price of a domain is $8~ therefore in most cases one sale and you've got your money back.

[S3 Web Design]

Hey thefandango, a few of us obviously find keyword domains help (NOT the whole answer, they just help!) so please do tell us why we are wrong.

Thanks

[websitedesign]

Good tips.

Plenty more tips but these are good for the begineer.