While search engine optimization is more black art than hard science, there are some basic best practices you can follow.
While some of these may be debated by SEO experts, here are some best practices you can work on incorporating:
Keyword Targeting
- Targeted keywords should be relevant to site and page content
- Select popular keyword phrases that your research shows will often be used in search engine queries
- Don’t go for the most popular SERPs unless your site has strong authority relevant to your targeted keywords.
- Especially when trying to establish your site, start by targeting popular but not the most popular keywords or your SERPs will most likely be low!
Meta Tags
- Page titles should include targeted keywords, should NOT exceed 65 characters in length and should include your site’s “branding”
followed by a separator; most commonly either a hyphen ( - ) or pipe ( | ) and then the title itself
- All pages should contain keyword-rich meta descriptions; descriptions are critical to getting traffic from links on search engine results pages!
- Use H1 header tags for prominent content titles
- Text links should contain targeted keywords with site-internal links for users to follow
Site Content
- Do not duplicate content; search engines filter duplicate content, so writing unique and differentiated content is critical to getting good SERPs
- Emphasize quality of content over sheer quantity; the staying power of good content is amazing, especially if it resonates with your target audience
- Permanent body text should be contextual to targeted keywords
- The same content should be visible users and search engines alike
- Publish a site map with text links
- Deploy a custom error page
Images and Graphics
- Images and graphics should have descriptive, keyword-targeted alternative attributes
- Define CSS image replacement for graphical navigation elements
- Always optimize images and graphics to decrease page load speed
- Avoid overusing images and graphics on a page; remember that many of the Web’s top properties tend to have very sparse graphics (think Google),
saving those Kilobytes for images that support page content instead of a highly graphical interface
Site Structure
- Home page and key category pages are the best ones for which to try and establish PageRank
- Database-driven page URLs should be simple and human readable. Keep URLs short but descriptive and always static!
- Use hyphens to separate words within URLs (ie /blogs/SEO-best-practices.html) even though these blogs do not follow this rule!
- Use a flat directory structure; try to avoid going more than 2 to 3 levels deep
- File and directory names should include targeted keywords
- Incorporate consistent navigation and strong search functions
Link Development
- List your site in quality, human-reviewed online directories where you are paying for an actual site review, not just a link!
- Submit site to Open Directory and try to get social site links (ie Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.)
- Avoid direct link exchanges and try to be sure all outbound links are to sites related to site and page content
- Avoid site wide links if possible
- Consider using ‘nofollow’ attribute for untrusted links (ie if site allows others to post content containing links)
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