Golden Rules for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Author: Dejan Bizinger

Search engines are hot topic. Google has great financial reports every quarter. Google is the most used search engine and if you want to use the power of search engines and to have success on the Internet you have to do your search engine optimization (SEO) wisely. We will give you several tips that will help you in making better SEO campaigns.

Rule #1 - Quality content

You probably know about that ""Content Is King"" rule. It is especially true for SEO. Try to have relevant and quality content, at least 400 words per page. Search engines love lengthy articles. You web site should be up-to-date, articles and news have to be added on a regular basis, at least once a week. This will show to search engines that your web site is an ongoing project and not some ""let's make a web site for Adsense"" schemes. Make your content relevant to your target audience, use appropriate keywords but don't make a mistake and do keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is when someone intentionally includes many keywords and repeats them many times in the article hoping to achieve better search engine placement. Search engines are machines but they are not naïve, and they are getting ""smarter"" every day. Your keywords need to have the most appropriate keyword density. You won't be able to know the right keyword density because search engines often change their rules. Several great resources and software can help you to choose the right keyword density and to be up-to-date with search engine trends.

http://www.searchenginewatch.com

http://www.searchengineguide.com

http://www.webceo.com

http://www.webposition.com

Rule #2 - Link popularity

Links are the next most important rule in making a successful search engine optimization. Many search engines give very much weight to number of web sites that have links to your web site. It is especially case with Google, the most important search engine, that use their proprietary technology called PageRank that ranks web sites by counting number of links it has on other web sites. However, quantity is not the most important thing. You should have quality links. So, Google will give you better PageRank (PR) if you have links on web sites with higher PR. They assume that if quality sites link to your web site that your site is quality, as well. That's why you should make ad swaps with quality web sites that focus on similar audience like your web site. Please be aware that linking between sites that are on the same server (IP address) won't bring you benefit in increasing your PR. To check your link popularity type site:www.yourdomainname.com in Google search bar and you will get list of sites that have links to your web site. Also you can use a free service at:

http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

Also, you should have a good internal navigation on your web site. It is recommended that you design your web site that every page can be accessed within 3 clicks.

Rule #3 - Meta Tags

Meta tags give different information about your web site. The most used Meta tags are for title, keywords and description. Meta tags are placed between tag in your HTML document. It is very important to give good page titles, description and keywords for every page on your web site. It doesn't have to be too short, but also it doesn't have to be too lengthy. Between tag you will write title of your HTML document. Title shouldn't be longer than 70 characters. Choose it very wisely. After that you can include different Meta tags. We will give you several most used Meta tags:

There are several useful free services that will help you in finding the best keywords for your web site. We can recommend you these services:

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox

Keyword Suggestion Tool

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Also, there are other Meta tags that you can use in your web site. This Meta tags give info to search engines when they should come back to your web site and re-index it.

The following Meta tag gives info to search engines what to index. In this case they will index all pages. However, you can also make some restrictions and to deny that some pages be indexed by search engines with making a so called robot.txt file.

Also, you can place a Meta tag that will give info about you or the author of your web site.

Those 3 rules are the most important rules in search engine optimization. Also there are other rules that we will only mention like to use a so called ALT tags to give description to your images, don't use database-driven links (make them search engine friendly) and don't use frames in designing your web site. Also, it is highly recommended to submit your web site to Open Directory Project web site (http://www.dmoz.org). It takes time to be indexed there but it is useful because it will help you in better search engine placement and many sites use Open Directory Project database on their web sites. After you have completed your SEO campaign you will have to check your rankings on search engines for different keywords. Beside above mentioned SEO software, we can recommend you these free services for checking keyword/ranking placement:

Free Search Engine Ranking & Keyword Tracker

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/

Search Engine Placement Check

http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm

We wish you to achieve the first results page!

About the author: Dejan Bizinger is a Contributing Editor for Infacta. Infacta is email messaging services company providing powerful, yet easy-to-use award-winning Group Mail, software for sending highly-personalized email messages and Group Metrics, software for email tracking. For more information visit:

http://www.infacta.com