SEO Wizzard

There is no shortage of information about Search Engine Optimisation but how distill the plethora of data down to something that is workable for basic application? Here is a quick guide to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for small business owners or not for profit community groups who want to get started but cannot afford the expenses associated with hiring experts. The overview is followed with some useful web links for tips on SEO.

Lets get started with your submission of your website to search engines – simply doing so will not drive traffic to your website. You need to do a lot more than that and the more common your product or search term the more difficult it will be to optimise your site. Generally you want to appear in the top 10 listings of a search engine. Others will tell you that searchers are impatient and only look at the top 3 results which makes your job even harder.

SEO considerations come into play even when you design your site. You should not use frames in your website as their content cannot be indexed by search engines. Flash pages are also very popular as they are interactive but an entire flash page cannot be indexed either by search engines.

Choose your keywords very carefully and index your title tag as well as your page content. Both should focus on using key phrases that searchers will look for to the search engine can find and serve this content. SEO experts recommend that page content should be around 200 words each and that keywords are not repeated more than 5 times. Additional information such as how-to sections and tutorials should be added to content pages where possible. Don’t forget to provide alternative text for images which provides another option for keywords. Also include plurals and different versions of spellings including misspellings when submitting your content.

And don’t try to trick search engines as you risk being blacklisted. Google has published a search-engine-optimization-starter-guide you can download through this link.

A very good guide on what to avoid with SEO is the “7 deadly sins of SEO guide” based on greed, sloth, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and pride. Sounds like fun read on…

Don’t be greedy and pay for links, it is best to establish natural searches over time as paid searches can sometimes get you into a bad neighborhood such as disreputable sites or those that are not related to your brand or industry which does not help your optimisation.

Dont’ be a sloth and forget to build links into your site. Backlinking is a very good strategy to optimise your website as search engines index your content across to the link. Particularly if the site is relevant and credible it will assist your SEO strategy. So always factor in weekly link building into your site.

Now this one is a bit far-fetched to work with the theme of the 7 deadly sins but don’t “Lust” after your competitor’s ratings and subsequently succumb to “black hat SEO”   such as cloaking, keyword stuffing or link farms. These practices provide short-term gains but will deliver long-term pains.

The next point also has to do with your competitors ranking and instead of “envying” what your competitor does get busy and analyse in detail what they do differently to you on and offline.

Gluttony is also a sin to be avoided. In context this means that you need to focus on keyword variance and not on density. SEO copy writing is a special skill and you should spend some time to learn about it. The aim is to mention keywords in a natural way that is pleasant for the reader.

And finally wrath will be brought upon you if you copy other websites to achieve high rankings. Search engines prefer regularly updated interesting content.

So don’t be too proud to keep your website optimised and regularly update it. This will further improve your rankings. Old content does not fare well with search engines.

Good Luck!

Sources: SEO Basics and SEO Tips & Ideas and 7 Things to avoid with SEO and SEO Global Network