SEO Optimization Strategies

As mentioned on our web traffic page, the best way to be profitable on the Internet is to get free organic search results from the major search engines. The rest of this tutorial provides some basic advice on SEO strategies for improving your rank in the search engine result pages (SERPs).

SEO: Page Title and Headers
Your entire web page will need to be optimized for the search engines, starting right from the header. Obviously, the title of every page on your web site should reflect the keywords you are targeting. Of course, this does require that the page will actually be about the topic that the title states. Don't bother trying to play any silly games with the search engines or you will likely just end up banned.

Although it isn't visible you should also think about your META tags. These are tags that can be used by some search engines to help them classify your page. Although they have been abused in the past they still do have some value. For example, your description might be shown when your page is listed as a result on a SERP.

It is generally suggested that you move your CSS definitions to a file so that it can simply be included from every page instead of repeated. As well as making it easier for you to apply changes to your entire site it will reduce the amount of text that the search engine sees before it gets into the actual visible content of your web page.

SEO: Headings and Emphasis
Generally, sections writing on your page should be preceded by headings. Take a look at this page. Notice that the content is divided into sections with various bolded headings to make it easier to read? These emphasised words generally describe the following content and are important for optimization purposes. In particular, you'll want to include the H1 tag and probably the STRONG tag, as the BOLD tag is supposedly to be deprecated.

SEO: Keyword Repetition
Although you don't want to go overboard, you do want to repeat your targeted keywords here and there throughout your article. Keep in mind that you are writing for people so don't make it appear spammy. For example, this page targets the phrase SEO Optimization, even though that is a bit of a misnomer because the acronym SEO actually stands for search engine optimization itself.

SEO: Content Quality
There are a couple of different aspects to content quality. Most importantly, always keep in mind that you are writing for a reader, not for a search engine. Use correct spelling, appropriate punctuation, proper grammar and suitable sentence and paragraph structure. A quality article with good information, especially if well written, is much more likely to rank well in the SERPs.

Another aspect of quality is the uniqueness of your content. Don't simply rip off other people and present their content as your own. Search engines are very aware of article libraries, copyright infringement and other less than stellar tactics that are employed these days. When they notice such actions they punish the sites that use these tactics and their results end up lower in the SERPs if they show up at all.

Finally, don't overlook the quality of the links you provide. Are the pages you point to, if any, related to the material in question? Do those desintations also contain high quality content? If you send the user off deceptively to low quality locations you can be penalized for that as well. Not only will the search engines wonder about your content, but users who are duped when following links are very unlikely to come back or give you free links.

SEO: Offpage Issues
Much of your ranking in the search engines can be due to offpage issues. These are issues that aren't directly related to the content on your page. For example, the keywords that people use when they link to you is important. Also, the quality and topic of the page that is linking to you will help determine the value of the link. Obviously, you want as many on topic and quality links as you can get. However, do not worry about being penalized for having a link to your site as you cannot control who links to you. At worst it is possible that some links will be discounted.

Although obvious, another common SEO tip is to make sure your keywords show up in the URL of your page. Generally, advanced webmasters will use something known as MOD_REWRITE to hide the dynamic nature of a web site and make it look like pages are in keyword specific subdirectories with keyword specific page names. In any case, while page names and directory names can be significant, the name of your domain should also target appropriate keywords, when possible.

There is some good information and SEO tips here... or perhaps you can get some advice at the Digital Point forums.