Basic Search Engine Optimisation Tips

[temi]

I have been asked to take a look at about two sites today and give basic Search Engine Optimisation Tips. I though a post giving top ten optimisation tips will be useful..... Other experienced SEO consultants are welcomed to add their suggestions:

1. Use Meta tags correctly; here is a basic skeleton of the minimum aspect of meta tags you should complete:

Title:
Description:
Keywords:
1a. Ensure you use the main keywords you are targeting in all three aspects of the Meta tags.

2. Right at the beginning of your page, as soon as possible use the keywords you are targeting again using tag, lets you are targeting the word "forums" try something like this:
Forums by Temi are the best damn forum on the net
3. The two sites I had a look at today, use image navigation, this is not bad BUT if your navigation is text based, its even better.
If you must use image-based navigation use Alt Attribute rather than alt tag, if you use images then adding the alt attribute is a waste of time (from an SEO point of view but not a usability one), unless the image is a link. If the image is a link then the alt attr text becomes the anchor text. (Thanks to OWG for correcting this).
use alt tags to optimise each navigation item.
4. Use the keywords you are targeting "Naturally" in your text, do NOT over use it.
5. Try and valid you HTML tags and eliminate any errors
6. Have a site map, list all the pages on your site on the site map and have a direct link to the site map from the homepage.
7. Have a link to all your important pages and sub folders from the navigation menu.
8. Have a robots.txt file in on your site and edit it correctly.
9. Crate a favicon for your site (FF expects a favicon, if you do not have a favicon you will see error lot to that effect when FF users access your website.
10. Test your website for accessibility (there is an EU law that makes basic accessibility part of website this day, in addition to complying with that law, there are basic SEO brownie points to be gain from using alt tag etc correctly.

[mrcrowley]

Thanks for these tips temi. Is the large text deliberate?

[temi]

Not all of it, I forgot to terminate the


<h> tag, its done now .

[OldWelshGuy]

Temi, can I add that it is the Alt Attribute rather than alt tag, and also that if you use images then adding the alt attribute is a waste of time (from an SEO point of view but not a useability one), unless the image is a link. If the image is a link then the alt attr text becomes the anchor text.

[temi]

Cheers James,
I have incorporated you suggestion.

[mrcrowley]

Question: The image on my page is made up of many small graphics, If i give them all the same alt tag would that be considered keyword spamming?

[UK WW ex member]

Question: The image on my page is made up of many small graphics, If i give them all the same alt tag would that be considered keyword spamming?

good question.

make it natural , be conservative . You know alt is to describe the imag


if you have 100 small images , for instance, IMO having same keyword may be suspicious to SEs. So if you use other keywords you will be in safe side I feel.

[LinkHunter]

Temi, can I add that it is the Alt Attribute rather than alt tag, and also that if you use images then adding the alt attribute is a waste of time (from an SEO point of view but not a useability one), unless the image is a link. If the image is a link then the alt attr text becomes the anchor text.

Absolutely correct!! I do believe that the SERPS are changing many methods of SEO concerning images and videos as we speak though to dress up their search pages!!

Galleries are great things to incorpaorate in your site for instance, to promote keywords!! (GalleryMenalto) is the best that I have seen so far and its free!

[OldDarkstarAccount]

Temi,

Your list is excellent , but I saw you were only taking in consideration the option of already having the domain name.

If, for example, someone still hasn`t bought the domain, a good thing would be choosing a domain name with at least one keyword incorporated. Of course that any webmaster considers the domain to be as easy to remember for the user as possible but if you think about SEO, it better to use a domain created from two keywords, for example for a website related to football :

www. somename .com is not as good as
www. football-news .com or www. footballvideo .com

Also you have not mentioned anything about the name of the pages ( I know you know this ) , it is better to use some keyword in the name of the pages you create than just naming your page too simple and not related to the subject listed on that page.

Some extra, but this is only my opinion, some tests of mine :
If you are working on a website owned by a company, but the url of the site is not exactly the name of the company, be sure to add ( if possible ) on each page, the name of this company, a phone number, an email and even the commercial register number. For the website of a company this aspect is very important, because :

- it has happened to me to have to search a company after the commercial register number
- the name of the company was something like " S.C A great company in Romania S.R.L" and the url of their website to be www. agcr .ro . Its possible that when searching for "great company" you get many other results than the page of this company and that is because companies tend no list their name very much on the page. By adding the name , address, email and commercial register nr you give each page one more chance to turn up in SERPs.

[TheeCommerceConsultant]

Title tag in your anchor eg <a href="mypage.html" title="my page"> make the links metas, content and title relavent not just to the page you are on but the destination page aswell.

Not sure I am explaining that well, but lets say you have a link to chocolate frogs but the actual page content you are linking to is pink flamingos that will do you no good.