Search Engine Optimization – Do it Right the First Time
Search engine optimization has become big business and the competition for top placement in the search engines is fierce and growing every day. If you truly want to reach the top of the search results for your particular industry then have to be committed to building and maintaining your web site correctly from the start.
Although, there is more to web site promotion and search engine success than search engine optimization (i.e. content development and management and linking strategies) there are specific things you can do when building your site to make it more search engine friendly. It is important to note that these strategies for SEO are best implemented from the start as part of the foundation of your web site. This is not to say that you cannot optimize an established web site it is simply easier if you are doing certain things from the beginning.
These SEO strategies assume that you have already done extensive research to determine what keywords you should be using to optimize your web site.
Basic Tips and Strategies for Search Engine Optimization/SEO
Use HTML
HTML is still one of the best languages for building web pages because there tends to be less clutter. Therefore if possible build your web pages in good old-fashioned HTML.
Integrate Keywords
When optimizing each web page of your site for your keywords try to stick with one or two keywords on each page. There is no rush to cram more than that because you can always build another page for your additional keywords and the more pages you have on your web site the better.
ALT Tags
Be sure to put attach ALT tags to every image on your site with keywords relevant to the image or page.
Title Tags
Each web page should be optimized with the appropriate keywords in the browser title. These keywords should be placed between the tags.
URL Address of Individual Pages
One of the most important aspects of your SEO is integrating your keywords into the URL address of your pages. While there are many different opinions on whether to use dashes or not between words there is really little evidence to indicate that it matters. Most prefer to use dashes. For example, if you are a search engine optimization firm and you have a page that explains your SEO services then you would want to have your page look something like this.
www.yoursite.com/search-engine-optimization-services.com
If your web store is build in a database driven system and the software automatically creates your individual web pages then you might not be able to create the URL for each individual product page. These pages often look something like this.
www.yoursite.com/index.asp?PageAction=PRODUCT
In this case you may not have any control over the URL but you can always build additional pages within your site by hand that have keyword optimized URL addresses.
Link Text
Take care to include your keywords in your internal links. This is called the anchor text of your links and is important in overall SEO.
Search engine optimization for your web site is really that simple. How many times should your keyword appear in the text on your web pages? That is really up to you and how aggressive you want to be. You will find many different opinions on how much is too much but it really boils down to readability. If you put your keywords in there too much it will not read well and it will be obvious that your keyword density it too high. Try to stay within 3-5% and you should be fine.