Short guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

[Swastik A]

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO is a tactic, a part of Search Engine Marketing,and more general, Internet Marketing, which revolves around the tecnhiques of optimizing your site so that they rank better in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP's).

Search Engine Optimization is broadly divided into two parts -

• On Site Optimization - Techniques like Title Optimization, URL rewriting etc and stuff that you'd do on your site.
• Off Site Optimization - Techniques which would be done off page, that is not directly on your site. Like link building.

So, Now Let's roll onto On-Site Optimization to get some details into how it's done, what it consists of etc.

ON PAGE OPTIMIZATION

SE Friendly URL's - A webpage's URL is http://www.promojunkie.com/67juhbb6533m.php. Another site has a URL http://www.promojunkie.com/How-to-seo.php. It's very obvious that the second URL is more SEO friendly, simple because it appears to be static.

TITLE Optimization - When a site is build up, there is a <title>--YourTitle--</title> element just before the head is closed. It is, infact, the most important part of on page SEO. Keywords that you target, should be put there in the Title. However, over-stuffing (putting too many keywords) would always harm your website.

META Keywords - Now a days, they are not as useful as they used to be, but still people keep them. They can be easily manipulated, so SE's don't give that weightage to them.
You can put them like this :
<meta name="keywords" content="keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3 etc..">
<meta name="description" content="My site Description goes here.">

Anchor text - Not many people would actually do this, but then I will write anyways. When linking to a webpage inside your website, you intentionally or unintentionally link it like -
Please click this link to know about the services we offer. However, you should be making it like Please check out the services we offer. That is what is called better internal linking.

Keyword Density - A keyword density of 6-7% with accordance to your text length is considered appropriate for any webpage. Over-stuffing of keywords here would not only make it look ugly, but also harm your position.

Now, I would just list some common mistakes, but should not be done by you:

• You don't put or forget to put the Image Alt tags. You could put your keywords there, make a better use and it also makes your website more accessible.
• Redirects are not considered good. If you have to put a redirect, put a 301 redirect.
• Duplicating other websites content would harm your website itself.
• Over-stuffing keywords won't put you in good position, rather harm your status.
• Avoid using frames, as search engines don't like them.
• Avoid using things such as flash because Search engine Spiders can't read into them. However, Google can read into Flash as well.

Off-Page Optimization

Off Page Optimization consists of link building, submitting to directories etc.

--> Submitting to Directories : Directory submission is the first and very important part of link building. When submitting to directories, the first and most obvious choice is DMOZ. It is the biggest manual directory on the web and is respected the most. Other directories that you should submit to are Yahoo (takes an annual fee of $300 USD), v7n, Jayde etc. You should submit to atleast 10-15 directories. Be quite careful and submit to your category only. Also, having a nice description of 160-170 words (with spaces) serves well.

--> Link Building - Other formulae : Link building can be done in many other ways too. I will list some common ones.

1) Exchanging links with other webmasters of your niche.
2) Creating a wordpress/ any theme and putting a backlink in footer and then selling it/ giving it away.
3) Writing an article with a backlink to your website.
4) Putting your website's links in forum signatures.
5) Commenting on other blogs with a link to your website. (Care about do-follow ones)
6) Designing graphics and releasing them and ask to put a backlink.
7) Submitting your website to social bookmarking websites such as Digg, StumbleUpon etc.
8) Make up a controversy and become famous. :p (Be careful though)
9) Link bait - Natural urge to link to a page.
10) RSS (Really Simple Syndication) - Others read your content and you get backlinks.
11) Go to Yahoo Answers and answer the questions and quote your website as a source.


I hope that this guide helps you in Basic SEO. SEO is a large topic and these are some basics of it. I wish you best of luck with your website.

- Swastik
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I am very sorry for any spelling mistake, gramatical mistakes that might have crept it.

[devilbatista]

Thanks for sharing your knowlege about SEO. I find your post helpful as it is a guide.

SEO Guy - Swastik, Keep it up. The guides are helpful.

[internoot.com]

Thanks it is very help for my website.

[pankaj]

2) Creating a wordpress/ any theme and putting a backlink in footer and then selling it.

I think it would be better to distribute it freely than selling it because we can get more downloads as compared to number of purchases by selling it.


What is no-follow and do-follow ?

8) Make up a controversy and become famous. :p (Be careful though)
9) Link bait - Natural urge to link to a page.

Please explain these two.

[Swastik A]

I have edited my first post. I agree that wordpress themes better be distributed free.

About the other things, well, no follow and do follow are tags which instruct the search spider either to follow the link or not to. So, many blogs use no-follow just to prevent..you know what I am saying!

About my points, make controversy and be famous means that you write something which is either highly appreciated or highly criticised. Both ways you get a lot of publicity.

Second, link bait is a natural urge to link to someone. Well, would Darren come to ask you to put a link for his blog in your blogroll? Never, why? Because you yourself would link to him for free if he has written some good article because you know the benefits you're getting.

Thanks for the questions and I hope you understood my points. If not, just shoot!

[pankaj]

Do you mean to say that no-follow is to save the search engines to crawl the link to avoid the link to copy/paste things and so avoid Google's penalization.

Is do-follow system working by default ?

How to do no-follow and do-follow ?

[Swastik A]

The first point - Yep. You got it right.

Second point - Yep.

Third point - You can Google it. Though what I remember, it's something like rel=do-follow/no-follow (your wish) besides the anchor tag. The link you are giving do-follow to will be getting PR points from you, if you have some weight.

[ursdesire]

nice post very helpful thnx for sharing

[Drench]

thanks for sharing the guide for seo! it's much apreciatedd!

[BlueBee]

Realy nice guide.i made my site n was searchng 4 such gud articles thx dude