Google Search Engine Optimization 101
1. Write good appropriate content, and lots of it. Keeping your pages, especially index page, updated daily seems to help.
2. Use appropriate titles to help get the attention of the user when they see you in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
3. Provide an attractive, fast loading page so that you don't lose the user before your page finishes loading. Use table less layouts. Download the free Aura template
4. Use cascading style sheets css to position your most important elements at top, as well as helping to streamline pages by keeping design separate from content
5. Provide good, easy to follow navigation. it helps both the user and the Search Engines .
6. Make sure that your site is worth linking to. See all of the above.
7. Never write with only the Search Engines in mind. If it does not read well to a HUMAN, then that high listing is just wasting everyone's time.
Only when you have all of the above in good order should you worry about things like keyword density. The next step:
Ranked by order of importance. ( Results of course will vary, as will the algorithm.)
1. Keyword in Title Meta tag - no more than 60 characters
2. Keyword in Description Meta tag - keep under 200 characters
3. Keyword in Body text- not just in body, but at least once in first paragraph, again in the middle, and again at the end of the body text. Google also loves fresh content. Update your page at least once a week.
4. Keyword density - 1-7% - No more, no less. Results will vary. You can use this keyword density analyzer
5. Page Rank/Links - best if from related sites with higher page ranks PRs. Read related thread,at the boards Page rank
6. Sufficient Content (Google seems to like bigger sites, more content)- content is more important than PR links. Without quality content, you won't get links, but you can get good ranking without links if you have good content
7. Keyword in incoming links (keywords in the URL not necessarily domain name)The point is "don't worry too much if your already established domain doesn't have a googleable keyword in it". Go for second best with shoving the keywords in the URL's.
8. Keyword in incoming link text
9. Keyword in text surrounding incoming link text
10. Keyword in H1 tags and keyword in H2 tags
11. Keyword in outgoing links - best if to related sites with higher PRs
12. Keyword in outgoing link text
13. Keyword in text surrounding outgoing link text
14. Keyword in alt image tags
15. Keyword in bold- hard to tell whether bold/italics would be more important than links, but I would definately include one bold keyword and one italic keyword on each page
16. Keyword in italics
17. Keyword in domain or sub domain name- it is more important to have the page/folder names include the keyword for that page and category. If you have one primary root keyword that covers your entire site, then using it in the domain won't hurt
18. Keyword in keywords Meta tag - Google doesn't use the keywords meta tag but other search engines do.
Check your Google Page Rank without a google bar:
PR checker
This actually worked for me. The Protagonist Web Hosting website ( as of July 14, 2004) is
- No. 23 out of 31,900,000 for webhosting keyword.
- No. 2 out of 6,080,000 for webhosting plans.
- No. 13 out of 2,480,000 for reliable web hosting.
I've been writing for the past 8 years in my online journal (since 1996) and gradually I built other sites through the years until the blog became the trend. I had no idea what SEO meant . I just wrote and wrote and wrote. I had an audience.
Then one day I decided to sell webspace , a webhosting business. By the time I started my webhosting business in 2002, I had 3 popular sites, an online forum and a network of friends who were bloggers. Naturally I would promote my own business in my blog, and link to it. And naturally, friends would plug it. It was the norm to link one another. I had a network of friends in place who would link my sites.
I was introduced to page rank( PR ) late last year when someone approached me for paid text links. By this time, I had 3 blogs, 1 forum and 1 resource page. One blog had almost 2000 entries. The other blog had about the same. And my third blog had less than 100 pages.The mere fact that the text link advertiser wanted to pay for ALL my 5 sites piqued my curiousity about SEO. I researched and found out 3 of my sites was listed in dmoz.org. I shifted the layout to CSS positioning. And I also followed OldWelshGuy advise: work on the inbound links.
All these Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips now makes sense. If you don't have good content, there won't be readers who 'll read your site and write about how great your site is. Without quality content, you won't get links, but you can get good ranking without links if you have good content
Being new in this SEO thing, I believe the secret is to write lots of good content in your site and google will love you.
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