Here’s a list of some techniques that every webmaster can use to boost that page ranking and become an SEO Jedi:
- Link building
- Simply put, link building refers to anything done to create more links to a website. There are two main purposes of link building: increase traffic and improve search engine ranking, or SEO.
- Link building works in both directions. Link can be built from the anchor text, where the link is placed, to navigate away from the users site to landing page, the destination of the link. Or in-bound links, which refer back to your site
- The amount of links a web site has will determine its Google PageRank, their proprietary algorithm for assessing a value to each web site within its index.
- (http://www.linkbuildingwiki.com/wiki/Link_Building_-_Glossary)
- On page optimization
- Not only will improve a site’s search ranking, but will also improve overall readability of the site.
- Important techniques:
- Title Optimization: the first thing that is indexed by search engines, should include the business name, important keywords (e.g. Business Social Networking & Professional Online Profile Management by Social Harbor). This is the first thing a user looks at following a relevant search so it should be clear and concise.
- Meta Tag Optimization: a brief description of the web site that should focus on the products and services that the company specializes. This is your 15-second elevator pitch, if well written a good Meta Tag can draw impressions.
- Image Optimization: tagging and linking images makes them readable to the search engine, they can only interpret text information.
- Duplicate content
- Substantial amount of content that completely match each other or are vast in similarities. More often, duplicate content occurs unintentionally rather than malicously to garner higher rankings, regardless, search engines penalize duplicate content. Content written in mulitple languges will not be flagged as duplicate content.
- Tips to avoiding getting penalized for duplicate content: check your links, put a warning on the page that you check for duplicate content to deter copycats.
- Google SEO Guidelines
- Following the guidelines set by Google is important to optimizing a website. Doing it correctly can be a great advantage. Inversely, breaking the guidelines can hurt a website’s reputation.
- How to raise page rank
- PageRank is a democratic system that analyzes the links, or essentially, the reputation of a site. Google also analyzes the quantity and quality of the incoming links a website is associated with. Because of the complexity of the algorithm Google uses, there is no way to guarantee a #1 page rank. However, there are some basic techniques that will optimize a website for better rank:
- Write desciptive Titles tags that are unique and brief
- Make use of the Meta Tags, the <head> tag of your HTML doc, this short snippet is useful to the search and is displayed with the relevant search terms in bold to guide the users. Meta tags should also be unique and accurate to the content on the site
- Keep the files and documents for the site organized to make it “more friendly”
- Good site navigation, no one likes to visit a site that looks like the webmaster was a 2nd grader who just discovered Dreamweaver.
- Have a useful 404 page to guide users back from a broken link or URL
- PageRank is a democratic system that analyzes the links, or essentially, the reputation of a site. Google also analyzes the quantity and quality of the incoming links a website is associated with. Because of the complexity of the algorithm Google uses, there is no way to guarantee a #1 page rank. However, there are some basic techniques that will optimize a website for better rank:
- Blogs and links from blogs – do they help or hurt?
- Help what? You’re page rank? If a website is linked to a less than reutable link, yes. The problem is the amount of blogs that are still in the Sandbox. On the other hand, look at the alternative benefits that blogs do provide:
- Completely inverting the sender/receiver relationship to create communities of brand advocates and change the way brands think about their conversations with the consumer
- Supplement the User-Generated Revolution with the likes of YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, etc.
- Giving a group of college students the chance to voice their opinions about digital marketing
- Help what? You’re page rank? If a website is linked to a less than reutable link, yes. The problem is the amount of blogs that are still in the Sandbox. On the other hand, look at the alternative benefits that blogs do provide:
