Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Tips and Tricks for Search Engine Optimization

1. Write great content
Great content is where it all starts. You can have all the keywords in the world, but if your content is no good, people won't stick around on your site and search engines won't find your site valuable.

2. Write unique content
Unique content is important too. You need to provide content that has different information than what is on other sites and other Web pages.

3. Add new content all the time
Sites that have new content added on a regular basis are seen as more reliable than sites that rarely do. This also helps you to increase the amount of relevant content on your site, which also improves your rankings.

4. Create a great keyword phrase
The first thing you should do when working on search engine optimization is find a great keyword phrase for that page. You shouldn't try to optimize your entire site to one keyword phrase - instead focus on writing pages for specific keywords and phrases.

5. Choose a phrase that is popular, but not too popular
When trying to decide on a keyword phrase, you want to find one that is popular but not extremely popular. This may seem counter-intuitive, but the reality is that extremely popular keywords are very desirable and so very competitive. It's better to try to optimize for keywords that you can rank higher. You'll get more pageviews from a less popular keyword when you're on the first or second page of the search engines, than from a super popular keyword that you only make it to page 50 of search engines.

6. Write an accessible site
Accessible HTML is accessible to both search engine spiders and screen readers. The more accessible you make your pages, the easier it will be for search engines to read and rank your pages.

7. Use the keyword phrase in your title tag
The title tag is one of the most important tags on your Web page. And placing your keyword phrase in the title tag, preferably at the beginning, is very important to get that phrase into the search engines. Plus, that puts your keyword phrase as the link in the search engine index.

8. Get a domain with your keyword phrase
Putting your keyword phrase in your domain name is a great way to optimize for that phrase.

9. Use the keyword phrase in your URL
Even if you can't get your keywords into your domain name, you can put them into your URLs. Search engines read the URLs and assign value to the text they find there.

10. Use your keyword phrase a lot, but not too much
The ratio of your keywords to the rest of the text on your page is called the keyword density. It's important to repeat your keywords in your document, but not too much. Keyword density should be between 3 and 7% for your primary keyword phrase and 1-2% for any secondary keywords or keyword phrases.

Optimizing for Google, Yahoo and MSN

Search engine optimization is a regular process, if you want your website to be a top ranker in all the major search engine results, its mandatory to update your website according to the changing algos of search engines. To gain higher rankings in the search engine results, first we have to understand the three internet giants Google, Yahoo and MSN. These are the three biggest existing search engines available. Almost all of us use any one of these three to make searches for any kind of information we want to look for on the World Wide Web.

Although these three search engines rule the internet industry but they all have a tendency to dominate another. Google has more or less succeeded doing this. Here are some facts about the three search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN, tweaking them can help you to rank well in the SERPs:

Let’s start with Google:

Google

1. Google consider the domain age most important as compared to other major search engines.
2. Quality links obviously can attract any search engine.
3. Active websites (updated regularly at any level) are loved by Google.
4. Get Listed in The Major Directories, helps you to climb success ladder on Google.
5. To please Google your HTML markups should be up to date as well as up to the mark.
6. Google with its advanced algorithm has started indexing websites which are based on LSI. Pages on your website should be relevant to your theme.
7. Your website should not be limited only to three to four pages to be indexed by Google.
8. Hyphens in URLs with keywords will definitely work.
9. W3C Compliancy in the source code is equally important for Google.

Yahoo

1. Keyword in Title Tag work for Yahoo.
2. Keyword Density is also an important factor.
3. Lot of Links (Site wide links work in Yahoo.)
4. Getting listed in Yahoo directory helps you to climb high on Yahoo, which is paid one.
5. Domain should not be too young in order to rank in Yahoo.

MSN

1. Keyword in Title Tag
2. Keyword Density Works
3. Freshness in content, relatively young websites can rank well in MSN.
4. Lot of Links (Site wide links work for MSN.)