The 52 Top SEO Tips – Here Are 10 of Them

From the obvious to the “Hey-I-never-thought-of-that-great-idea-before”, here are 10 of the top 52 tips on how to optimize your website for its turbo-charge rocket ride up the search engine rankings.

Be bold. Use the <b> </b> tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site. Here is an example of deep linking, in this case to my personal happiness workbook.

Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?

Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won’t follow additional links to the same page. You can see this in action at the link to the home page on this web site monitoring page

Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?

Article exchanges. You’ve heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else’s article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)

Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

Not anchor text. Don’t overdo the anchor text. You don’t want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation – something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, “Gumbo Pudding Pop” occasionally, “Get gumbo pudding pops” as well, “Gumbo-flavored pudding pops” some other times, etc.

Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It’s called the navigation bar. See how the second navigation bar at the bottom of Last Minute Florida Villas is like a mini-site map?

There you have it: 10 of the 52 Top SEO Tips, a free tip sheet that comes with Don’t Get Banned By the Search Engines:

There is a lot more to search engine optimization, and there are always more details when looking at an individual site. But these tips should help any website significantly improve its rankings.

Easy, No-Cost Tips for Promoting Your Website

If you think creatively and plan to save your advertising dollars, you can promote your site very effectively on the cheap end. Some methods will generate quick results while others will slowly grow to a steady increase in traffic.

Forum Posts

Forum posts work much like Yahoo Answers which is actually a type of forum. When you post in a forum you get to not only list the forum post, but you also get a personal profile with a signature. Usually you can list your URL in the signature tab and any posts you make will also be inbound links to your site. Also, when you post in a forum you are adding credibility to your reputation. Building credibility and a link to your site are two instant bonuses.

Fresh Content

Article marketing is becoming a very lucrative business. Many new search engine algorithms have changed to now look at the amount and quality of site content. In order to generate site content you could spend lots of time writing page after page of new information, but if you are like many you don’t have the extra time to spend on this aspect of marketing. There are several sites which offer fresh content on a variety of subjects and will allow you to use the information provided you include the author’s tagline intact. Offering this fresh information will give your readers a reason to come back and it will give them something to tell their friends about, thus increasing your traffic.

Opt-in lists

An opt-in list is the perfect tool for capturing important content needed to target your readers with sales and promotions. Anyone who is on your opt-in list has given approval to let you contact them with information about our products and services. You can use your opt-in list to promote new products that you will add to your site and to draw attention to your site’s offerings. When members of your list find something they like they will be more likely to pass that info on to their friends and after all, “word-of-mouth” is the most effective and most inexpensive form of marketing available to anyone.

These are just a few of the many ways to promote your site for free. If you think creatively and plan to save your advertising dollars, you can promote your site very effectively on the cheap end. Some methods will generate quick results while others will slowly grow to a steady increase in traffic.

You will need to track the overall effectiveness of each method for your own situation so that you do not spend too much time on a particular method that doesn’t work for you. SEO should always be your first step in the process and if possible, should be considered in the site design stages.

SEO-Title and Meta Description Tag Optimization

Title Tag and Meta Tags are the author-generated source codes that are positioned in the <Head> segment of your HTML document. Apart from the Title Tag, other information inserted is not visible to the person surfing your web page, but is visible only to the search engine crawlers. Title and Meta Description Tags are especially important as they can be used to influence the ranking of your site (to a certain extent) and the way it appears in some search results. There are several Meta Tags like Meta Description Tag, Meta Keywords Tag and more, but out of the existing Tags the most important and popular ones are the Title Tag and the Meta Description Tag. Though the Title Tag does not belong to the Meta Tag family (click for more information on Meta Tags), yet from the Search Engine Optimization point of view, the Title Tag is the most significant tag on your web site, followed by the Meta Description Tag.

What is a Title Tag?
The Title Tag is an HTML code that shows the words that appear in the Title bar at the top of your web browser . These words do not appear anywhere else on your web page. For instance, the Title Tag of this page appears as ‘ Meta Tag Optimization : Title and Meta Description Tag Optimization ‘ at the top bar of your web browser. This is because these words were entered into the Title Tag of the web site’s HTML code. Usually, the Title Tag is the first element in the <Head> area of your site, followed by the Meta Description and the Meta Keywords Tags. Before, we discuss the Title Tag in greater detail; lets see how it looks in your web site’s HTML code:

<Head>

<Title> Meta Tag Optimization: Title and Meta Description Tag Optimization</Title>

</Head>

Why is the Title Tag Important from Search Engine Optimization perspective ?
Title Tag is an important Tag amongst other SEO related options, as it not only communicates the theme of your web page to the human visitors but is also considered very important by the Search Engine crawlers. Title Tag is not a Meta Tag, but nevertheless it is the most important of all Tags. Almost all crawler based search engines use the Title Tag to gather information about your web site. The search engines use the words or the content of the Title Tag during the ranking process to analyze the relevance of your web page. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, AOL, AltaVista, and AlltheWeb use your web page’s Title Tag to evaluate its relevance. Title Tag is the hyperlinked text title that is displayed in the search engine results page (SERP). The users, in turn, click on this hyperlink to go to your web site.

The Title Tag is also used as the text when you ‘bookmark’ a page or add a certain web page to your ‘favorites’ list in your browser.

A carefully constructed Title Tag is very important for your page’s ranking with the search engines.

Of late, a large number of articles have been written with differing views and opinions regarding the relevance and benefits of various Meta Tags. Most experts, however, agree that the Title Tag is a significant tool in any search engine optimization campaign.

Working with the Title Tag
Since the Title Tag plays a vital role in determining your site’s ranking in the SERP, you need to pay a lot of attention to the words that appear in the Title Tag and the order in which they appear. You need to develop a crisply worded Title Tag that includes your most relevant keyword phrases and performs the function of announcing the summary of your web page’s content.

Title Tag and Keywords
Amongst all the places you can use your important keyword phrases, the usage of keywords in the Title Tag gives the highest weight.

While using your keyword phrases in the Title Tag, it is important to be highly focused. You should use the same keywords not just in your Title Tag, but also in your page content and the Meta Description Tag of your web page. If the keywords you intend using in your Title Tag do not appear anywhere else in your page’s content, then avoid using them in your page title as the weight of the keywords in the Title Tag gets diluted.

It is essential to sequence your keyword phrases correctly in your Title Tag. The order in which they appear is of great importance. Having your most important keyword phrase towards the beginning of the Title Tag helps display your title in bold in the SERP (search engines result pages).

Other Do’s and Don’ts

• Consider using both singular and plural forms of the important words in your Title Tag. For instance, you may use both ‘loan’ and ‘loans’ while making the Title Tag. Google is still experimenting with Stemming (interchange of singular and plural terms); however, it is fluctuating in its deployment frequently. A word of Caution: Do not overdo it.
• Title Tag length : Google usually reads about 90 characters of your Title Tag. Therefore, a Title Tag of about 80-90 characters is good enough.
• Do not use keywords repeatedly as the density of your keywords does not matter in your Title Tag.
• The sequence in which keywords appear in your Title Tag is important. Try using natural phrases for your Title Tag, which read better and will likely conform to your Keyword Phrases.
• Avoid using the same Title Tag throughout your site. Try using a unique Title Tag for each web page and use keyword Phrases that holds theme relevance to that page. You also get to leverage more keyword phrases if you individualize the Title Tag in all pages.
• Most search engines are not case sensitive ; therefore, you can write your Title Tag in a way that looks most visually appealing.
• Title Tag should ideally read like a phrase that makes some grammatical sense, not just a collection of keywords. This is all the more important as the Title Tag usually appears as the text when you ‘bookmark’ or add a page to your ‘favorites’ list. Therefore, it should make sense when a person reads it later. For instance, if you want to include the keywords Home Loans, fast clearance, No credit check in your Title Tag, you can write a Title Tag that reads:

Home Loans: fast clearance with no credit check.

What to Include in your Title Tag ?

You could put the product or service you are offering in the Title Tag, instead of your firm or company name. This is because most users when searching for, information search for specific products or services, not company names. Also note that search engines read about 80-90 characters in your Title Tag. This is prime Real Estate for your important keywords. If you strongly feel like putting your company or domain name in your Title Tag, then, do so at the end. Wasting several characters by inserting your site name does you little good.

In a nutshell, the basic ingredients of a good Title Tag are :

• It should announce the summary of your web page content.
• It should read like a crisply worded sales pitch that is enticing enough to make the users click on your entry when it is displayed in SERP.
• It should include your most important keyword phrases or search terms.
• The sequencing of the keywords should make logical sense.
• Each page of your website should have different and customized Title Tag relevant to the context of that page.

The Title and Meta Description Tags are very important aspects of your search engine optimization campaign. This exercise begins with carrying out a thorough Keyword Phrase research. Keyword phrase research forms the most essential and important aspect of any SEO initiative. After selecting your most relevant keyword phrases and writing a keyword rich copy for your web page, you can now work these important search terms into your Title and Meta Description Tags. Read our detailed Article on Keyword Phrase Research .

The Title and Meta Description Tags are very important aspects of your search engine optimization campaign. This exercise begins with carrying out a thorough Keyword.

Phrase research. Keyword phrase research forms the most essential and important aspect of any SEO initiative. After selecting your most relevant keyword phrases and writing a keyword rich copy for your web page, you can now work these important search terms into your Title and Meta Description Tags. Read our detailed article on Keyword Phrase Research.

What is Meta Description Tag?

The Meta Description Tag is a part of HTML code that allows you to give a short and concise summary of your web page content. The words placed in this Meta Tag, are often used in the search engines result pages (SERP), just below the Title Tag as a brief description of your page. In the Search Engine Results Pages, after reading the Title, a user usually studies the description of the page and decides whether she wants to visit your site or not.

Some Search Engines prefer to ignore your Meta Description Tag and build the description summary on the basis of the search term for the SERP on the fly. They usually pick up parts of the text on your page wherever the search terms appear. The only exceptions are the Flash, Frame or All Image sites that have no content, and some high importance websites, where the search term is not found in the text. In such a case, Google picks up your entire Meta Description Tag and displays it.

This is the way Meta Description Tag appears in your site’s HTML code:

<Head>

<Meta name=”description” content=”Meta Tag Optimization: Title Tag Optimization and Meta Description Tag Optimization. Tips about how to optimize your most important Tags.”>

</Head>

Importance of Meta Description Tag
All search engines do not give very high prominence to the Meta Description Tag and may generate a description on the fly while listing your web page in SERP. However, in some search engines, a good Meta Description Tag might help a page to rank higher for your targeted search terms. This holds true for Flash, Frame or All Image sites that have no content as well as some high importance websites, where the search term is not found in the text. In such cases, some search engines pick up the exact Meta Description Tag and display it in its SERP, just below the Title Tag. Hence, it is important to write a crisp and enticing Meta Description Tag that includes your important keyword phrases and manages to interest your user, thus making her click on your entry.

Working with Meta Description Tag
Keyword Phrases and Meta Description Tag: Include your most relevant and important keyword phrases in your page’s Meta Description Tag. As in the case of Title Tag, focus on the same keyword phrases as you used in your page’s Title Tag and body text. Fewer and highly targeted search phrases can boost your web page’s relevance in the search engines results. Hence, stress should be on writing a brief yet informative description for your web page.

The Meta Description Tag of your web page should not read like a collection of keywords, but should be written as an informative and interesting summary of your web page.

Do’s and Don’ts of a good Meta Description Tag :

• Excessive keyword repetition should be avoided. Instead, pay attention to the sequence in which your keywords appear. Your most important terms should be placed in the beginning.
• Make sure each page on your web site has a different and a unique Meta Description Tag using the keyword phrases that are relevant to that web page.
• A Meta Description Tag of 25-30 words should do fine.
• The most important keyword phrases should, ideally be placed at the beginning of your Meta Description Tag, which increases your chances of better Search Engine Rankings.

SEO Tips

1. Write and submit articles. It is a classic, but it works. This will be indefinite traffic stuck in the search engines for you.

2. Write quality unique articles, not articles that are rehashed or provide no insight to readers, which is a huge problem these days. ..

3. Write and submit press releases, think prweb after you do one.

4. Write and ping blog entries. Always make sure to link back to your website with your blog posts. Try making multiple blogs and have them all link back to one main site.

5. Make sure your website is listed in DMOZ: http://dmoz.org/. .

6. Advertise your website in the appropriate categories at Craigslist. Try posting your ads in the most populated cities in the world.

7. If a niche related forum that you frequently visit allows signatures, then make sure to add your website url in there.

8. Make sure to view related products on Amazon.com. You can try and take some customers from your competitors here by providing your own url if the product is similar. Review websites in your niche on Alexa to try to take some of their traffic by including a reference back to your site.

9. Review some related products on epinion.

10. If you purchase a product that you actually like, then feel free to give an individual respect when respect is due and leave a testimonial. You should be able to get some traffic from that website if your testimonial is left with a url.

11. Whenever you send an email to someone, always add your website url as a signature.

12. Keep updating content on your websites/blogs… try at least once per week.

13. Tag blog posts at social bookmarking sites, especially at http://del.icio.us/. .

14. Add photos to your blog with appropriate keywords.

15. Tag blog photos at Flickr.

16. Politely ask your readers to subscribe to your rss feeds.

17. Try coining your own term. Might want to trademark it if you smell that it will become popular.

18. Encourage readers to comment on your blogs.

19. Include translation for your websites/blogs, especially in Chinese.

20. Do not be boring; write about something that a wide select of people would want to know about.

21. Make sure to edit your writing (unlike what I m doing).

22. Comment on other related blogs.

23. Make a custom 404-error page for your website. You can provide a link back to your main website or even try to monetize it by offering a related affiliate program within your niche.

24. Sponsor a charity, most charities will link back to your website, and you are also doing a good deed.

25. Sell an item on eBay as a charity auction. Most charities will link back to both your auction and your main website.

26. Start a publicity campaign, do something that individuals in your niche will take note of.

27. Brand your website with a logo and a slogan/catch phrase. Think IBM.

28. Hold a crazy contest that people in your niche will talk about. This will equal more links and traffic to your website.

29. Build a tool that individuals in your niche will love and enjoy. Then give it away for free. If the tool is helpful, then you will get quality one-way links to your website.

30. Contact small newsletters sources offline and submit articles to them.

31. Become friends with editors of an offline publication.

32. Give speeches offline. Start small and local. Also, do not forget to participate in toastmasters meetings in your area.

33. Have a GREAT product. All of the marketing/advertising in the world will do you NO good if your product is sub par.

34. Make something innovative. If you are selling information, what makes your content something you cannot get from the local bookstore, Barnes and noble or even eBay for that matter?

35. Is your product groundbreaking? Will you leave individuals with no choice but to talk about your product or service?

36. Are you selling something that wide groups of people want to know about but there is limited/scarce knowledge?

37. Write good content, if your writing is good then people will share it with their friends. In addition, webmasters will use it as content on their website with a reference back to your article, or at least they should.

38. Spark emotions. If you get people emotional about something then they will most likely talk about it.

39. Get a custom t-shirt made with your website url on it, and wear it often.

40. Build a list of subscribers. Your list is like a golden asset to you if utilized correctly.

41. Write tip articles, such as “Ten easy tips to blank-blank-blank.”

42. Buy traffic from the search engines by utilizing one of their PPC campaigns.

43. Open up a myspace account and find targeted friends so that you can promote your services to them. Do not spam people, myspace is cracking down on spammers and are starting to sue people.

44. Solicit a link from your local chamber of commerce.

45. Have an easy to remember domain name. If your domain name is too long or not memorable then people may forget your site.

46. Add a bookmark option to your website/blogs.

47. Purchase the misspelled versions of your domain name and have it redirect to your main one.

48. Use keywords in your image alt tags. For example,

49. Make sure to include appropriate keywords in your title tag, search engines show more prominence or importance to keywords here.

50. Place appropriate keywords in your anchor text when linking.

51. If you have a profile anywhere online, always include appropriate keywords and link back to your website.

52. Try to get links from websites within your niche with a high pr (pagerank). Some The more one-way links (inbound links/backlinks) you have to your website, the higher your pr will become. Pagerank is important because websites with higher prs tend to have a higher search results in Google. It is a no brainier that if you can get number one for a competitive keyword then you will have enough traffic that you can handle… oh by the way its all free targeted traffic to remind you. ..

53. Outsource grunt work. Time is in essence money…. you can hire individuals at freelance services to send emails, request JV proposals, or to answer questions from prospective or current customers.

54. Offer something for FREE. Abracadabra is not the magic word, FREE is. It is like a worm on a pole for a fish in the water…. its bait! Offer a free mini course or free ebook to help collect more subscribers. You can always offer a backend to monetize on this opportunity, such as an affiliate product for example. .

55. After someone orders from you offer a one-time offer that compliments your product. For example, if I offered a traffic ebook, then after the individual purchase it would make sense for me to offer a traffic conversion bonus for a limited time only.

56. Become the virus within your niche. Make yourself the bug and have people talking about your product. When people talk about your product then you can induce the viral effect. However, you must give people a reason to talk about you, and being like everyone else is not one. ..

57. Do your research and find expensive niches to tap into. A good way to do this is to find how expensive someone is paying for a keyword on a PPC search engine. If you can sell items that are more expensive more often then it is a quicker way to get rich.

58. Become an active respected member of niche related forums. You can do this by offering quality posts. Hint, it is not the number of posts you make, it is the quality. Remember, quality or quantity. Many useless or negative posts will have people looking at you funny. .

59. Test, test, test. Your flushing money down the toilet if your not testing to see what campaigns are bringing you in the most money compared to which ones are costing you money. When you test, you can eliminate the campaigns that are costing you dollars so that you can properly maximize your marketing efforts. Without proper testing, you are pretty much lost and can’t improve. You can only guess to what has or what is working. With proper testing, you do not guess, you know.

60. Stay up to date on what is going on in the world, you can monetize off hot topic trends.

61. Network, when you know more people you can find people that can help you get what you need.

62. Offer an affiliate program for your product or service. Make sure to let your satisfied customers know that you have one, if they like your product then they will be even more delighted to know that they will get money for referring you.

63. Write and give away a free ebook or report. It does not have to be long as long as its quality information neatly formatted and put together. You can also make a brand able ebook or report and allow affiliates the opportunity to brand their affiliate links in there to pass on to the next individual. You can then send this ebook to your subscribers or submit it to ebook directories. ..

64. Add viral components to your blog such as social book marking options, and a refer a friend option.

65. Be funny, people like something that will make them laugh and they will spread it for you if it is a genius idea.

66. Syndicate your content by using an RSS feeds on your website.

67. Answer people’s questions on Yahoo! answers with a link to your website in the sources area.

68. Put a link in the “about me” section of your eBay profile.

69. Make and upload a viral video to you tube. Use appropriate keywords in the video description for your target audience.

70. Record an informative podcast and submit them to poplar podcast directories.

71. Provide helpful answers for Google adsense on their help forum with a link back to your website. Go here to check it out: http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help

72. Get people to comment and add content to your site. When they do this, they will provide you unique content, no need to pay for ghostwritten articles.

73. If you cannot get JVs, then try to bribe webmasters for sponsored advertising space on their newsletters.

74. Include a media section on your website so that you will give the media an easy way to stay up to date on what your company is doing.

75. Try to teach a class at your local community college or university. The more exposure you get in the public, the more credibility you will receive.

76. Make a screensaver and make it easy for individuals in your niche to download it. Have eye candy graphics combined with your company logo to brand yourself.

77. Write something controversial and spread it freely to your target market. It can be something as idiotic as the Da Vinci code, but as long people talk about it, its a successful campaign. A few hints, something controversial is something that goes against established beliefs in your market.

78. Write and publish a book. Having your own book is a quick way to gain credibility.

79. Take a guru in your niche out to lunch, and pay for it.

80. Start an organization or club about something. This can be done online through Yahoo! or Google groups.

81. Volunteer. Donate your time to a good clause…you can always network with people and form connections at the same time.

82. Get involved in your community and try to run some type of outreach program.

83. Offer good customer service, you may be surprised on how many referrals you get just be having a reliable one.

84. Consider adding a direct mail marketing campaign to your marketing ****nal.

85. Put an ad in your local yellow pages to get some local customers. Yellow pages tend to be more successful then newspaper ads because individuals are looking for a particular service when they are browsing through the yellow pages as opposed to newspapers.

86. Post bulletins in your local supermarket. However, since not everyone may carry a pen or pencil, place your contact information and url on strips on the bottom so that individuals can rip it off and take it with them.

87. Host your own commercial so you can put “as seen on TV” on your products.

88. Conduct surveys and publish them. These make you appear as an expert in your field of study.

89. Break a record or shoot to be in the Guinness world records for something.

90. Make a sitemap for your website.

91. Use a favicon for your site.

92. Make your visitors more involved in your website. You can help accomplish this by adding CGI scripts to your site.

93. Make sure you have no broken links on your site, and make sure that your website shows clearly in all browsers.

94. Find domain names that get traffic, purchase them, and have them redirect to your website.

95. Spell correctly whenever using keywords in writing.

96. Look at sites related to your niche to try to figure out how they get their traffic.

97. Properly optimize your website for the right keywords.

98. Try to avoid java scripts on your website as much as possible.

99. Do not use frames on your website.

100. If your website becomes popular and starts getting lots of traffic, try switching to a dedicated server. The longer you site is down equals the more lost visitors you will have

SEO Techniques

SEO techniques are classified by some into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt to minimize the effect of, referred to as spamdexing. Professional SEO consultants do not offer spamming and spamdexing techniques amongst the services that they provide to clients. Some industry commentators classify these methods, and the practitioners who utilize them, as either “white hat SEO”, or “black hat SEO”. Many SEO consultants reject the black and white hat dichotomy as a convenient but unfortunate and misleading over-simplification that makes the industry look bad as a whole.

“White hat”
An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered “White hat” if it conforms to the search engines’ guidelines and/or involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White Hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.

White Hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then make that content easily accessible to their spiders, rather than game the system. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility although the two are not identical.

Spamdexing / “Black hat”
“Black hat” SEO are methods to try to improve rankings that are disapproved of by the search engines and/or involve deception. This can range from text that is “hidden”, either as text colored similar to the background or in an invisible or left of visible div, or by redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly. A method that sends a user to a page that was different from the page the search engined ranked is Black hat as a rule. One well known example is Cloaking, the practice of serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors.

Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines’ algorithms or by a manual review of a site.

Results from Black Hat and White Hat SEO Techniques
Black hat SEO techniques may quickly deliver results. However, due to the disposable nature of the domains, the results are often short term – although they can be long term.

White hat SEO techniques can take some time to implement (although not necessarily) but their results tend to last for a long time (although, again, not necessarily).

It’s true to say, then, that both black hat techniques and white hat techniques can generate both short term and long term results for clients, whether results are measured in terms of rankings, traffic, conversion or profit. However, do the ends always justify the means? I don’t think so. I believe that by continuing to condone black hat techniques the SEO industry is setting itself up for failure and sleepwalking into oblivion. The following two articles, Ethical Search Engine Optimization Explained and Search Engine Optimization and The Law, will expand upon this belief.

What Is Blue Hat SEO?
At the moment, BlueHatSEO.com is the only website on the Internet that is completely dedicated to the art of Advanced SEO. Blue Hat SEO is essentially the study of advanced Internet marketing and search engine optimization techniques. Blue Hat SEO covers the advanced knowledge of both Black Hat and White Hat SEO. Everything on BlueHatSEO.com will assume that the audience knows and understands the basics of SEO and Internet marketing. If it helps, think of BlueHatSEO as the creative aspect of SEO.

Blue Hatters use their knowledge of the search engines and other marketing practices to twist and manipulate them in a creative and original way to best benefit their sites.

The concept of Blue Hat SEO rose out frustration in the lack of advanced SEO knowledge made available to webmasters. The motive behind this site is to inspire other webmasters to copy and mimic it in hopes of creating more resources for the advanced search engine marketer. We want to create a venue where knowledgable webmasters can share and present their ideas and techniques. This, in hope, will lead to other sites dedicated to the art of advanced SEO tactics. Until this goal is reached enjoy the content!

Search Engine Optimization Tips

Search Engine Optimization Tips

• Title – Many search engines weigh the data in your title more heavily than other data in your page. Make sure that your title has keywords that represent your site effectively. For the most part the title should be short but always include your keyword(s).

• Meta tags – Use the meta-tag description and meta-tag keywords attribute on every page of your site that you want the search engines to index. If you don’t want a page indexed, then try the robots exclusion tag. The robots.txt exclusion protocol has more support with spiders.

• Content – Write great content using your most important keywords prominently throughout your web site. Visitors who read great content will link to your web site and recommend it to others.

• Keyword planning – Always do keyword planning on both the search engines and directories to determine the best set of keywords and keyword phrases your target audience is using. Look for “related searches” in search results for ideas.

• Alternative text – Put alternative text in your graphic images that clearly describe the graphic image and using your keywords whenever possible. Do not put text in a graphic image that has nothing to do with your web page.

• Frame Pages - Most search engines simply can not index a frames page. They get to your site and can’t go anywhere. Consider frames like a big ‘GO AWAY’ sign. If your site does use frames, doorway pages are ideal for better rankings.

• Don’t try to fool the search engines. This is probably the biggest trap people fall into. People come up with ways to ‘fool’ search engines, and they work for a little while…sometimes. But then the search engines catch on and write routines that penalize sites that use this practice. Examples of this include, but are not limited to: repeating keywords over and over; using invisible text (white text on white background); using very small text to jam the keywords in a small area.

• keep the important content near the top of your pages. The actual text on your website is very important. Search engines (spiders) read this to determine rankings. Some engines will place a higher rating of importance based on where they find the text in your page. Closer to the top is usually better. But having keywords throughout your page develops a “theme” and that too is important.

• Don’t stuff the top of your pages with data the engines can’t read. As with the last example, something higher up in your page can be more important that something further down. Therefore, HTML formatting, images, scripts, etc. toward the top of your page can result in lower ratings.

• Website Content should be your #1 priority. Your quest for high placement must start with a good website. It is important to have a lot of text describing what you do. Use your keywords in the content, but don’t repeat them over and over. Many search engines rate sites based on ‘keyword density’. This is usually a formula that looks at META Keywords, words in your TITLE, words in paragraph text, words in links to other pages, and even words in the ‘ALT’ text on your images. They will even look at different forms of your keywords. For example, if an important keyword for you is ‘CLOTH’, the word ‘CLOTHING’ in the body of your document will raise the confidence in the word ‘CLOTH’ on some engines

• Keep your site updated. Make sure that your site is up to date. No one likes to go to a page that never changes or that is very out of date. Make sure that the data in your page portrays the message that you want to send. Check the links on your site every now and again. Make sure the links are still active. Dead links are not only an inconvenience for the visitor, but can also negatively influence your rankings.

• Don’t go image crazy. We have all seen pages that are almost all images. Usually they are the most beautiful sites. After all, your artist can make beautiful screens that display your content in the most eye-pleasing way. However, the search engines don’t have eyes. They don’t see the beautifully formatted text in your image. All they see is ‘yourimage.jpg’, and ‘yourimage.jpg’ doesn’t go far in terms of content and relevancy.

• Links to Other Pages. We can’t emphasize enough the importance of links. Both from your page to other pages, and from other pages to yours.

• First consider links on your pages. When many search engines see them, they consider your site more ‘real’. It also give the search engine spiders a place to go. Make your links meaningful. Make sure they relate to what you do (and keywords that are important to you). You can’t have too many links on your pages.

• Links from others websites. Some search engines place a very heavy rating of importance on how many other sites in their index have links to your website. Think of it for a second. If you knew that a company was only linked to by one website, versus a company that was linked to by a thousand websites, which one would you consider more important? If you were a search engine, you would surely try to link the more important ones first.

• This is where patience comes in again. It can take some time to get a ton of links to your website. We help quite a bit here, the fact that we submit to so many sites will help you get a great head start in this area!

• Consider Banner Ads. These are a very popular method of promoting your Web site. They are the little rectangular graphics that you see near the top or bottom of some popular Web pages. If you click on them, they transport you to another Web site. You can make your own banners using one of the many “banner creating” websites. Most offer free banner making.

Things NOT to Do !!

• Spamdexing – Generally, you should NOT submit every single page of your website to search engines. In most cases, you should submit only your home page and perhaps a couple of other very important pages at most. The rest of your website will be indexed by the search engine’s spider naturally after the first page is submitted. Over-submitting your website can get you blocked from being listed!

• Invisible/Tiny Text and Keyword Stuffing – Once a very popular form of inserting tons of key words and phrases into your pages, this is now considered a BIG no-no even though you’ll still see it from time to time! This is achieved by placing very small text at the bottom of a page and/or text the same color as the page’s background. This, too, can get your website blocked from search engine listings. Let your website’s content speak for itself!

• Use of non-compliant HTML to manipulate relevancy – Multiple titles and other techniques which aren’t HTML standards compliant, used specifically to raise relevancy. The first 2 in the grey area would be real candidates for this area as well. An example of non-compliant HTML would be using a title that does not reflect the content of the page. The links lead to information on proper implementation of elements.

• Use of CSS (cascading style sheets) to manipulate relevancy – Using hidden elements (layer or span elements etc) that can’t be seen by executing code to reveal them. This activity has not been addressed in SE content guidelines.

• Comments – Comments help maintain the code in an HTML document. Comments should not be used to raise relevancy or manipulate SE descriptions. Previously *on site* in Excite content Guidelines.

• Invisible form elements – Used to hold keyword values, not a well known technique, however they can be used this way. Not known to be mentioned specifically in any SE content guidelines or “unwritten policy”.

5 Tasks you should do every day

There are five simple tasks that you need to do daily to keep your site on top. Here they are:

1. You need to start off by managing your links. This involves making sure that none of your current links are dead, and you should also check if there are any sites linking to you that you don’t know about. If your site consists of a large number of links you should make sure that they aren’t getting out of control and get rid of anything that is no longer relevant. Also make sure that your links are sufficiently labelled to reflect the page that they link to.

2. Re-order your links, putting the best ones first. And putting them into categories if you have a high number of links. If you have a links page with 25+ links it is a good idea to turn it into a directory of some sort. This can even help you in getting more links to your site in exchange for back links on the directory that you have created. Also check the sites that you link to and make sure that any back links that are due to you are still there as you don’t have much reason to keep a link if you aren’t getting the backlink that you deserve (if the back link was, indeed, negotiated when you placed the link onto your site).

3. Process link request emails. Whenever you receive requests for a link exchange, respond quickly. Not every mail you receive will be a good one, and you should make sure to check any site that wants you to link to it. If you are declining a link request let the web master know why. Perhaps you have an incite that they do not have. They may be able to fix a few things and then become excellent link partners in the future. It is common curtesy to inform the web master as to whether or not you are willing to exchange links within two or three days of receiving a request. Web masters will be even more impressed if you send them a personalized message regarding your approval or disapproval of the link exchange.

4. Check link exchange forums. This is a similar aspect to the above except that in this case it is more difficult to keep track of all of the people who can potentially request links from your site. There is a lot of spam on these sorts of things as well as many really terrible and useless sites. If you encounter such a site or forum member, inform them of your problem with what they are doing and report them to a moderator/administrator if they do not correct their behavior in a suitable manor. It is important that these kinds of forums be kept clean or a search engine may consider it a link farm more than an exchange service.

5. Finally, you should check each feature of your website, to make sure it’s still working properly. The dynamic content that you will probably include at some point must be delivered properly. Any messages that are generated on the fly must not be generated at misopportune times. The difference between a quality dynamic site and a subpar dynamic site is that in a quality dynamic site all content is delivered at the right time and everything seems static and planned out.

Take your time with your website and make sure that you do everything you can for it each day. Keep adding anything new that you find, because updating regularly will keep search engines coming back to spider more often. Updates are crucial and if you can follow the patterns here of insuring quality and precision, you will probably be able to come up with other ways that you can insure your visitors satisfaction and your increased traffic, link count, and search engine listings.

Never agree to link to someone’s site without asking for a link in exchange, unless they offer to pay you – even then, you should think twice. All your incoming and outgoing links need to be related to your site’s content for you to be ranked high in the search engines.

Basic Link Checks.

Some sites use robots.txt to stop search engines from indexing their links pages, in the mistaken belief that outbound links will count against them. To check, just retype their URL with robots.txt on the end (for example, http://www.website.com/robots.txt). If you see a page that says ‘Disallow’ and has the URL of their links page, then they’re not letting spiders index that page. Don’t exchange links with that site.

You should also check to see if the website is being ‘cloaked’, and report it to the search engines if it is. You don’t want to get involved with these people – better to have them banned and out of the way.

Does the site offering you a link have PageRank? Even if they do, you should look at how it drops between the front page and the links page. Be aware that new pages take a while to get ranked, so PR0 doesn’t necessarily mean a site that will never have any PageRank.

Take a look at how many links are on the page already. There shouldn’t be more than 20 links – if the site breaks this rule, don’t even consider it. Plenty of webmasters collect links, thinking they’re helping their rankings, but it just has the effect of making them look like link farms. Many of them don’t even involve linking to the big spam industries, like casinos and adult content. There’s no point in having a link from a site that takes links from just anyone.

Do It Yourself SEO: Ten Search Engine Optimization Tips

Using a professional search engine optimization service can sometimes be expensive. However, if your budget is tight and you have a basic understanding of web page construction it is possible to optimize your own website without hiring an SEO specialist. For those who would like to give it a try, here are ten “Do it yourself” search engine optimization tips:

1. Think about SEO right from the start.

Many people plan, design and build their websites without giving any thought as to whether their site is search engine friendly or whether it will be capable of attracting traffic in organic search engine results. At the last minute, after most of the site has been built, they try to optimize their site, not realizing that this work should have been done throughout the planning and building process.

It is far better to think about search engine optimization in the earliest stages of the project. For example, if it is at all possible, choose a domain name that will allow you to include your most important keyword or search term in your URL. If you are selling bicycles then you would do well have to a domain name like www.xyzbicycles.com . And don’t stop with the domain name; include your keywords in your file names as well. For example, a sub-page of this hypothetical site might be www.xyzbicycles.com/road-bikes.html

2. Design your site with both search engines and users in mind.

Your site should be easy for your human readers to understand, but it should also be easy for search engine robots as well. If you want to see what a search engine robot will “see” then view your site in a notepad document or use the html view of the popular web editing programs.

If you have used gif images to represent your headlines or other important text, then this text will not be picked up by the search engine robots. In addition, if you have designed a site that is entirely in a flash format, you will not be providing the search engine spiders with much “food,” or searchable text.

Furthermore, if you have long strings of java script and complex style instructions in the head section of your html page it is better to put the java script in an external file and the style instructions in a separate CSS (cascading style sheet) file, in order to give prominence to the actual text of your web page.

3. Write individual title tags for each and every page of your website.

From the standpoint of search engine optimization, the single most important sentence on any web page is the title tag. The title tag gives the search engine a good indication as to what your page is all about. Incorporate your main keywords or search phrases into your title tag, and keep them at the very front of the sentence. These keywords are more important than your company name (unless it is Coca Cola!). So our XYZ Bicycle Company might have a title tag that looks like this <title> Bicycles: Racing Bikes, Mountain Bikes, Road Bikes, Bicycle Accessories from the XYZ Bicycle Company</title>.

The title tags of each of the sub-pages of the site should reflect the main content of those pages. Nevir use the same title tag for all the pages of the site.

4. Write a concise description tag for each of your web pages.

Just as the title tag is the most important sentence or phrase on any page, the description tag is the most important paragraph on any page. Summarize the gist of your page in two or three sentences, again incorporating the keywords and search phrases for which you think people will use when searching for your site. A description tag for the home page of the XYZ Bicycle Company could look like this: “The EXZ Bicycle Company manufactures mountain bikes, racing bicycles, road bikes and bicycle accessories. Our bicycles are distributed and sold around the world.”

5. Put your keywords into headers and headlines on your page.

Your human readers and search engines alike need prominent headlines in order to understand what your page is all about. While a human reader only needs to see the headline in a large bold text, search engines distinguish the headlines, which they regard as important indicators of the page, by noting which phrases are encased in header tags such as <H1>, <H2>, <H3>, etc. H1 is considered most important and your first headline should be labeled with this tag. If the header tags make your copy look too big, then you can change the size of the headers by creating style instructions that will render the headlines into sizes that are consistent with the look and feel of your site.

6. Write copy that includes your keyword and search phrases at the beginning, middle and end.

If you want to write website copy that is search engine optimized, then you only have to follow good writing and presentation procedure. State clearly what you want to say in the opening paragraph, elaborate on your basic ideas in the middle section of your text and at the end summarize what you have said, reminding your readers with text that is similar to the opening paragraph. Be natural; don’t try to stuff your page with the keywords. If you read the page out loud and it sounds funny, then you have overdone the repetition of your search phrases and keywords. A density of 2% is considered to be OK. Thus in a 400 word page of text your keyword might be repeated eight times.

7. Place your keywords and phrases in the link text of your web pages.

So far we have placed the keywords in the strategic places of the web page: the title, the description, the headlines and the body text. Now we have to see that the keywords are included in clickable link text on the page. Whenever you are linking to sub pages or other pages of your site, make sure that your keywords are included in the clickable portions of the links. Thus, instead of making a link that says “click here” for more information about bicycle accessories, it would be better to write: click here for more information about “bicycle accessories,” with the keywords “bicycle accessories” being the anchor (clickable) text.

8. Install a navigation system that can be easily followed by search engines.

One of the most important steps in getting more traffic to your site is to ensure that all of the site’s web pages are included in the search engine indices. Normally a search engine robot will visit the main page of a site and follow links to the other pages. If your navigation system is based on java script, or on images, there is a possibility that some search engine robots will not be able to follow the links and thus they will not pick up the interior pages of your site. One simple remedy for this problem is to build an additional text-link navigation bar and place it at the bottom of the page. This additional navigation bar will serve multiple purposes:

a. Help the search engines to reach the interior pages.

b. Put your keywords in link “anchor text”.

c. Remind the user to go deeper into the site by repeating the navigation options again.

9. Build a site map page or use the Google sitemap option.

Getting all of your pages indexed is so important, that it is also prudent to take another step that will ensure that all of your pages are visited by search engine robots. A site map is a page that has text links to all of the pages of your site. As with a text link navigation bar, a site map serves multiple purposes:

1. It helps users to find what they are looking for on the site by providing an outline summary of all of your pages.

2. It helps search engine robots to land on the interior pages.

After you build your site map page, be sure to make a link to it from your home page and the other important pages of your website.

In addition to a normal site map page, you can also make an XML site map, upload it to the server and then register it with the Google site map tool. You can use a free online utility to create your XML site map at: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps for more information. This process is easy to accomplish, and registration with the Google sitemap program will supply you with important statistical information from Google as well as help to get all of your pages indexed.

10. Once your website is up and running concentrate on off-site optimization.

So far all the steps that I have outlined are concerned with on-page factors, the parts of your website that are under your control. But your ranking in Google and other search engines will also be heavily dependent on off-page factors such as how many high quality sites link to your site. Unless you obtain a good amount of high quality links to your site you will not be able to compete in highly competitive search categories.

By far the best way to get links to your site is to build a site that has valuable content. You should endeavor to build a site that is so “cool” or so unique, that other people will link to you without even asking you. Of course this is easier said than done, but it should be what you are striving for.

The next best way to get high quality back links to a website is to write informative articles and get them published on other websites with a link back to your site. This process is known as article marketing and it not only helps to build incoming links, but it also builds your online reputation as an expert in your field.

Other common methods of increasing incoming links include submissions to important directories, participation in forums and careful trading of links with respected websites.

If you follow the ten “do-it-yourself” search engine optimization tips that I have described in this article, you will have taken a big step towards guaranteeing the success of your online enterprise.

SEO Strategy

What’s it like to work for a world class SEO? What secrets could you glean on website promotion? The SEO business is sexy, exciting and challenging. While most people want to improve and promote their site, web promo companies often deal with such diverse clients, it sharpens their instincts for what works and what don’t work in the SEO game. This article presents a few tricks, tips and myths about how to SEO your website into GOOGLE heaven.

Content + SEO = Top GOOGLE Positions

If you have great content and decent SEO techniques, you’re webs site should do pretty well in the search engines. If you have SEO stuffed pages full of garbage keyword phrases, sooner or later, you’re gonna pay the price. There are too many billions of dollars at stake for cheap tricks to raise search engine rankings for long. Combine great content with great SEO instincts and bang… you’re website traffic will skyrocket. Here are some common tips, you may have heard, but are worth repeating.

Website Design – SEO Strategy
If you can’t highlight and grab the text off of your website – look out! If you can’t grab it and paste it into a document, how do you think a search engine is gonna read it put it in their search engine. Sure, people will tell you, don’t worry, the search engines index it not problem. Maybe they are right, my gut say Watch Out! Keep it simple!

Keyword Selection – SEO Strategy
You can spend hours researching your keywords, try lots of combo’s and still get zero results in the search engines. What the problem? CONTENT! The key words and the content have to flow together. For example, if you write about dog grooming and switch to a few cat grooming examples, you may defeat your SEO efforts. If you write for the search engine like you were talking to a ten year old, you’ll probably get much higher SEO results.

Meta Tag Mania – SEO Strategy
There are tons of meta tag how to’s to read and confuse you. Here’s a tip for writing better meta tags – pretend you’re asking them out on a date and just say what you have to say without all the bull corn. For example, “I’m ah, going to be in the area this evening, and wonder if you would ahh. oh yeah and I just rebreed something… ah, what was I trying to say is ahh, there’s a nice film tonight if you would like to ah… Now compare that speech that never got to the point with, “Look girl, I think you’re beautiful, would you like to see a movie with me?” And shut up!!!

Copy Writing – SEO Strategy
Ditto for the copy writing – less is more. Pretend you’re writing for NPR. What do they do? They tell you what they are going to tell you, tell you what the have to say and then tell you what the told you. NPR are no dummies, if that’s what they do, it must be good so jump on the band wagon and blow your trumpet.

Image Tags Copy – SEO Strategy
By the time you’re concerned with adding image tags to SEO your website, you either have a great site way, way up their in the search engines or you’re a SEO junky that needs help. No body can assure you #1 rankings on Google so don’t set your sails for impossible goals. Someday, we’ll all wake up in the 1980’s again and discover the sense of freedom people back in pre-internet era.

Tips For SEO Template

SEO Template

Domain Name

Your domain name should be about your product, not about you. It should say “www.widgets.whatever”, not “www.the-great-us.whatever”.
Where you make blue widgets and your keyword research has established that people are indeed searching in quantity for the term blue widgets, then your domain name should be “www.blue-widgets.whatever”. Use of the hyphen is deliberate. Engines see hyphens as a separator between words. Don’t forget, the human eye can seewordsjoineduptogether as being words joined up together. An engine can’t do that. We can’t have spaces in domain names though (a technical thing) so the obvious compromise is to separate the words in the domain name by a hyphen. Not by a dot (.) or by an underscore (_), but by a hyphen (-).

File Name

Again, blue-widgets.htm or .html, .php or .asp, (or whatever according to format) for preference.

Title Tag

Your subject or service should be first, your company name second, if at all. Remember, if you’re Joe Blow and you make widgets, the public will be searching for widgets, not Joe Blow. They never heard of you to look for you, right? So the layout is as follows; “Blue Widgets from Joe Blow Services, the Best of the Blue Widget Makers.”

Description Meta Tag

Same rules; product first, your name second. So it’s “Blue Widgets Customised to Your Specification, from Joe Blow, Home of the Quality Widget. Also, it needs to be long enough for Google to be able to fashion a decent-sized snippet from it. If it’s too short, only a few words long, Google will look elsewhere on the page to source its snippet. This means you relinquish some control over what appears there.

Keywords Meta Tag

Blue,Widgets,Quality,Specifications” etc. Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to shovel in every possible related word you can think of, I’ve seen sites that have lines and lines of these, the same ones on every page. A few pertinent ones on every page please, with variations according to the content of the specific page. Separate them either by commas or by spaces, not by both. It used to be said that you only need to include any one keyword once as the engines would parse them into any possible phrases. Lately there are suggestions that Yahoo wants to see comma-separated phrases. perhaps it would be as well to include just that.

Head

Javascripts and CSS styles usually go in here. They need to be externalised into an external file and referenced accordingly. I used not to bother with either a doc type or a charset but I include both religiously now as validation lately receives wider acceptance as important.

Header Tag

There’s several Header Tags, varying from Most Important (H1) to Least Important (H6). Your keyword or key phrase need to be the first words in the first Header Tag, which should be an H1 tag. The tags should be used in order of descending importance, i.e., your first tag should be the H1 tag and each following tag should be in series, use next a single H2 tag or a series of H2 tags. Don’t start with an H3 tag, then use an H1 tag etc. This will just confuse the engines about the relative importance of your site’s content.

First Paragraph

First words in the first paragraph are your key phrase.

Bold

They’re in “bold”. Or “strong”.

Text Content

Sprinkled liberally throughout your page is your key phrase. If it feels right, then it is. If it feels right and it’s only mentioned twice in a 10,000 word document, and it feels right, then it is right. It’s the document that’s wrong. You’ve written a document that, let’s face it, can’t include your key phrase to any great extent because your document isn’t actually about the subject, is it? You may have started out with the right intentions, but you seem to have got lost along the way. I’ve done it – no reason why you shouldn’t either. Perhaps you can take this page, run a keyword analyser over it and find out what it’s actually about then you can use it as a related page in your site. Remember, you’ll always need more content. Home, asleep in bed, you’ll always need more content.
To sum up, if it’s mentioned ten times in a document that’s one thousand words long, and it feels right, then it is.

Graphic Content

Keep your graphic file names brief and inclusive of a keyword. Alt tags for ordinary graphics are lately being considered relevant again for seo purposes so it’s best to include a keyword.

Internal Graphic Links

Remember that in a graphic used as a link the alt text counts for seo purposes just as normal anchor text does in a text link. Alt=”widget site – large blue widget” would be preferable to alt=”here is a picture of me and Sharon at the beach on holiday in Blackpool last year and if you look closely, you can see I’m holding a widget”.

Internal Text Links

Use keywords in the anchor text throughout. Don’t link to “home” link to “blue widgets home”. Who searches for “home”?
Don’t link to “seminars”, link to “blue widget seminars”. Who searches for “seminars”? Include your keywords in your links. Take this important opportunity to remind the engines what your site is about.

Headers/Footers

Notice the layout of the pages here? I use the same sets of links in the header and the footer. This gets them all in twice (at time of writing – the site expands almost daily so I’ll have to re-think soon) and it’s perfectly legitimate.

Tables

If you’re going to use the traditional table layout, remember to build your table so that the actual main content appears to the engines before the list of links to the left does. Engines will expect important information to appear first. This won’t be so important if all your links include related keywords as I advise above, but it’s still worth bearing in mind.