Like Classic Paintings SEO is a Combination of Efforts
Perhaps one of the more misunderstood facets of search engine optimization is the fact that it isn’t completing one action, it is a combination of many completed actions. When all of our efforts come together, and complement each other, you have a classic!
Getting your site optimized is the first thing you should endeavor to do once you have your site built and online. I would suggest learning about SEO before you jump in and start making changes. It’s a progression of code and content changes that you should do in a certain way to ensure that the engines will actually like, and respond by ranking you better.
I have seen many people make the mistake of jumping into SEO without having the knowledge to really make the correct changes to their site. These people inevitably load their pages with keywords and do a lot of things that are just going to hurt your ranking, or the ability of your site to ever be ranked.
Something to avoid is overuse of your keywords. It happens all the time too. People just don’t understand the history behind the spider spamming and think that more is better. 50 keywords on your page will probably get you banned for that keyword. Five on the page may well get you listed high for it. Algorithms are always changing and there really is no one keyword density for any given page. This is something that has roots in all the other facets of your page, everything else that is there, and where any given keyword appears, whether it’s in heading tags, or just text. Get lots of inbound links.
SEO is common sense, but it is even more than that. It is understanding how different html tags works together, and how the search engines will perceive that. It is a lot of trial and error which will, in the end, lead you to good solid and proper optimization techniques. All of this will lead you to better search engine rankings.
Let’s face it, without listings “above the fold”, (visible without scrolling) on the first page at Google, you are just not going to get many visitors. You need to get your site into these top positions in order to make any real advancement in your online marketing.
Concentrate on getting your optimization right for the major engines, Google, MSN and Yahoo! This is where 99% of your traffic is going to come from. They each have differing algorithms, but good solid techniques will help you win on all three of these giants.
The first things to get straightened out on your site is the use of the title tag, I like to keep it under 12 words, the code attributes (alt=, title=, summary=), meta description and keywords, H1 tags, H2 tags, keyword density, your navigation and the anchor text used and internal linking. These items are among the major improvements you need to make to all of your web pages.
Filed under: SEO