49 SEO and Web Site Promotion Tactics

[Jeb]

49 SEO and Web Site Promotion Tactics - GreatNexus Blog

http://www.greatnexus.com/blog/109.html

 

 

Okay, since everyone is making a list for the holidays, here is my SEO checklist. I try to group them as the best I could, and the list isn’t in any order of importance. Enjoy!

Site Infrastructure (7)

 

1. Keep your URL short and simple. The key is to minimize these three characters in the URL: “/”, “?”, and “&”. Most importantly, try to eliminate session ID variable.

2. Make sure your web site has good uptime, response time, and bandwidth. Switch your web host if necessary.

3. Avoid using frame for your layout. Framed sites are very hard to optimized properly.

4. Avoid using table for your layout. You can have much cleaner and leaner code with CSS. As a bonus, your web pages will also load faster.

5. Use keywords is your file and directory names

6. Use hyphen (”-”) to separate keywords in file and directory names, but don’t use too many hyphens.

7. Link your web pages together in a reverse tree hierarchy - i.e., home page links to section home pages to sub-sections to individual pages, etc.

 

On Page Factors (18)

 

1. Use keywords in your page title. This is the HTML <title>…</title>

2. Use keywords in your heading tags - i.e., <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc.

3. Strategically use <b> <strong>, <i>, <em>, etc. to emphasize important information. Make sure this emphasis contains your keywords.

4. Use validated HTML code.

5. Minimize the use of Flash. Search engines cannot really interpret Flash content.

6. Position your content as close as possible to the top of your HTML mark up (CSS can help you with this)

7. Put your web pages on a diet. (1) Move your CSS and JavaScript to external files (2) run your images through graphics optimizer to reduce the file size, and (3) remove all non-essential content - i.e., links, graphics, etc.

8. Write good content relevant to the theme of your web site.

9. Have at least 250 words on each of your content page.

10. Read your content. Make sure it sounds natural and conversational.

11. Add keywords throughout your content. Especially, at the very beginning and at the very end of the web page.

12. Repeat your keywords a few times, 3-5 times is a good number — just don’t over do it.

13. Use several variations of your keywords. For instance, if my keyword is “SEO”, I want to have some of these words in the content: “Search Engine Optimization”, “SEM”, “Search Engine Marketing”, “Web Site Promotion”, “Optimizing”, “Ranking”, etc.

14. Research your keywords — wrong keywords equal no traffic. For instance, not many people search for “webmaster dictionary”, but a lot more people search for “definition of {blah}”.

15. Don’t hide your keywords — the search engines should see what the users see.

16. Avoid cloaking — don’t give the search engines a different version of your site.

17. Follow the rules of usability — make sure your site is pleasing to the eyes, has nice colors, is easy to use, clutter-free, etc.

18. Follow the rules of accessibility. At the least, make sure you use alt attribute and title attribute to describe your images and links, respectively.

 

Link Building (12)

 

1. Submit your sites to as many web directories as you can.

2. Use keywords in anchor text of links.

3. Link to related items within your site.

4. Link to most popular items on your site, especially to your best sellers for eCommerce.

5. Link to key pages from your home page.

6. Make sure every page link back to the home page.

7. Create a sitemap page with more links to your key pages.

8. Link to other credible sites in your industry.

9. Try to get credible sites in your industry to link to you.

10. Use normal direct HTML links.

11. Avoid broken or dead links.

12. Avoid linking to bad neighborhood

 

More Strategies (12)

 

1. Focus on one theme per web site

2. Focus your SEO effort only on the big three search engines: Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.

3. Focus on the right type of search engines - i.e., Technorati for blog, Froogle for shopping, etc.

4. Add RSS feeds of your site content. RSS has really gained a lot of popularity over the last few years with the explosion of blogs. RSS can quickly and automatically notify readers and aggregators about your site updates. A great way to gain more return traffic and links.

5. Switch to Blog as a platform for your web site. This automatically gives you RSS capability and opportunity to take advantage of blog search engines, directories, tagging, etc.

6. Track and analyze your web site statistic to learn more about your visitors and see what work and what doesn’t.

7. Leverage Press Releases to gain more traffic, links, and visibility.

8. Use Pay Per Click like AdWords to supplement your organic search engine traffic.

9. Go international. Have your web site in several languages to gain more traffic and customers.

10. Be useful. Whether it is information, product, or service, you should have something useful, and if possible unique, to distinguish your site from the rest of the Web.

11. Think small. Don’t focus on highly competitive keywords. For maximum ROI, you are better off ranking higher for a lot of less competitive (i.e., more specific) keywords than ranking higher for a few highly competitive keywords.

12. Create a sitemap.xml and submit to Google Sitemaps.

 

This is by no mean a complete list. If you can add something to it, please feel free to do so via comment.

 

 

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