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Written by Stymiee, copied from SitePoint forum, all rights reserved by Stymiee.
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(Since SEO is not a science this is a gutsy post to make so cut me some slack! :))
Google now has its own FAQ. Click here to view it.
Build your website for human beings, not search engines!
What are SERPs?
s is an acronym for earch ngine esults ages. Basically they are the search results you receive when doing a search at a search engine.
What is anchor text? Why is it important?
Anchor text is the visible hyperlinked text on the page. For example, let's examine this code:
<a href="http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/">Webmaster Forums</a>
The anchor text for this link is "Webmaster Forums". This is important in search engine rankings because the search engines use anchor text to help determine the relevance of a page being linked to for those keywords. By having this link pointing to their forum's web page, SitePoint Forums will perform better in searches for the phrase "webmaster forums" (and other similar phrases as well).
How do I get a lot of backlinks to point to my site?
A good place to start is to submit to directories. Start with the free ones and then decide whether pay ones are worth it for you. Here's a great place where you can find a free directory listing that sorts them by PR, Alexa rank (worthless), and more: http://www.tipsntutorials.com/Top-Directories/ and also check out http://www.isedb.com as it lists thousands of place you might find worth submitting to.
Do outbound links improve your ranking?
No. This is a myth.
I was thinking of doing <seo trick here> to my site but I'm afraid the search engines might think it is spam. Should I do it?
No. Why? If you're not sure if it will get you in trouble with the search engines or not then it's probably something you shouldn't be doing. Another good reason not to do it is accessibility. Many webmasters employ hacks and tricks in an effort to increase their search engine ranking. Often times these tricks are at the expense of the usability of their website. Not only to those who have disabilities but to anyone who's trying to navigate their site.
How many keywords should I put into my <title>, <a>, and <h1>..<h7> tags?
You should only put the few keywords that are most relevant to your pages. The more you put in each tag, the more you dilute the value each keyword is given.
<h1>Advanced PHP Programming</h1>
is better than
<h1>Advanced PHP Programming Is Really Cool And Stuff Dude</h1>
Meta Tags
The large majority of search engines do not use Meta Tags as part of their ranking algorithm. The most notable exception is Yahoo which does use them (at least the meta keyword) but it's weight in their algorithm is extremely low and essentially has no influence on a high ranking (it may be useful to jump up you from the 1,000th position or so). Some will claim Google uses Meta tags in its algorithm. This is entirely untrue. Google, however, will use a meta description tag if it is unable to discern a description for a webpage on its own (if the page has no text and no description in the open directory [dmoz] the it is likely Google will use the meta description tag in its SERPs). Please note that it is only using this description in its SERPs, not its algorithm.
Should you use Meta Tags in your site? Yes. They do have some affect in some search engines and even though that effect is almost zero it is still more then zero so is worth the time.
How much time should I spend on my Meta Tags? Ten minutes . Write a nice concise description of your page and throw in a sampling of keywords (which you should have them handy if you've optimized your pages properly). You should spend no more time then this on them. Use your time to promote your site and get quality inbound links.
How many keywords should I use? As many as you want. If you start to think you may have too many, you probably do. This means you need to divide your page into subpages with each one taking its own topic.
What happens if I use includes for my pages? Will the search engines see them?
The search engines don't care about what server side technology you use. All they see is the (x)HTML your server side code generates. To see what they see simply load your page in your favorite web browser and then view the source. What you see is exactly what they see.
Should I submit my website to the Search Engines by hand or use software?
Do it by hand. It will not take long to do and will ensure that you are successful in submitting each form with the correct information. There is a constant debate about how search engines feel about automated submission software. Since there is a reasonable chance these are frowned upon by the search engines, and since you can do anything they can do on your own, you might as well avoid them.
But, if you're going to use software, these title seem to be the most common ones recommended: Addweb, Web Position Gold, Web CEO.
How often should I submit my website to the search engines?
Once. Resubmitting your url does not get you indexed faster or improve your rankings. Also, resubmitting your site will never cause your site to be banned. If so, then all you would need to do is submit your competitors' sites repeatedly until they were banned.
Pages with .php extensions don't rank as well as pages with .html extensions
This is a very common myth that is 100% untrue. The file extension does not affect your rankings in any way. After all, no matter what server side programming language you use, and what extension you choose to use with it, they all just spit out HTML in the end. That's all a web browser will see and that all a search engine will see.
Sites with .com rank higher then with <TLD here>
This is another common myth that is untrue. The only time a domain extension can affect your ranking is if the search is based by country. The country-specific TLDs (e.g. .co.uk) will have priority over non-country specific TLDs (e.g. .com or .net).
One observation many make is that .coms tend to rank higher then other domain extensions. They assume it is because .coms are given preferential treatment. This is a poor assumption. .coms seem to rank higher then other extensions because they are by for more popular then any other domain extension (there are more .coms than .net, .org, .biz, .edu, .gov, and .info combined) so they naturally have a greater chance of ranking higher vs other domain extensions through sheer quantity alone. .coms also tend to be older sites so they have had a chance to establish themselves whereas newer domain extensions have not. They have also used this time to acquire more backlinks which is an important factor in search engine algorithms.
It is also commonly believed that .gov and .edu sites are given preferential treatment from search engines. This is also untrue. Web pages on .edu and .gov domains tend to rank well because they contain quality content and many webmasters will link to their content as a result. Both of these are key elements in SEO. But the fact that they are .edu or .gov domains does not benefit them directly in the SERPs.
Pages with query strings don't rank as well as without query strings
Another common myth that is untrue. The only way variables in a query string can affect a site in the SERPs is if it has a sessionID or something that looks like a sessionID in it (e.g. id=123456). These usually prevent indexing of these pages or limit the amount of pages indexed. But query strings do not affect the page's ranking. Neither in a positive way or negative way.
Should I use relative links or absolute links?
Absolute links. It is recommended by Google as it is possible for crawlers to miss some relative links.
I just changed from .html to .php. How can I switch without losing my rankings?
There are two ways to do this:
Tell Apache to parse all .html files a .php file. Using this method you do not have to change any files extensions or worry about any redirects. To do this, place this code in your httpd.conf file:
| AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html |
Use a 301 redirect to redirect from the .html files to the .php files. You can do that by placing this code in the root directory of your website:
| RedirectMatch 301 ^/(.*)\.html$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1.php |
I just changed my domain name. How can I switch without losing my rankings?
You'll need to do a 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain. Fortunately this is not difficult to do. You'll need to add the following lines of code to a file called .htaccess and place it in the root directory of the old domain:
| RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?old-domain\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.new-domain.com/$1 [R=301,L] |
Why aren't all my pages being indexed?
If your site is less then six months old stop reading now. Your site is too new to be worrying about getting all of your pages indexed. Be patient. It takes time to crawl through your whole website and add your pages to the index. If you are sure your pages are search engine friendly then you have nothing to worry about.
If your site is six months old or older you need to check your website to make sure all of your pages can be found and indexed. Have you:
An additional note: get incomming links. These are important for the search engines' algorithms and may play an important part in how deep the search engines will crawl your website.
How do I check if my site is search engine friendly?
Turn off JavaScript, CSS, and cookies in your web browser and view your website. This is how the search engines most likely see your website. If you can successfully view your content and navigate your website your site is mostly search engine friendly. The only other thing to check is your URLs. Not using a session ID or 'id=' in your query strings is also very helpful.
What does it mean to have your site indexed by the search engines
To be indexed by the search engines means your webpages have been crawled and included in the database of the search engines. Your pages are now available to be included in search results of user queries. This doesn't mean your pages are guaranteed to be included. It just means they are available. The pages will still need to be relevant to the search terms before they will be included in the SERPs.
Which is better for domain name and/or url: hyphen (-), underscore(_), or plus sign(+)?
Hyphens are the best keyword delimiter you can use in your domain name or URL. Hyphens are universally accepted as a keyword separator by all major search engines. Yahoo and MSN do recognize the underscore (_) as a keyword separator but Google does not. As Google has the lionshare of the search market its methods must take precedence and thus hyphens should be chosen to separate keywords.
Source: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/
Many say that separators are not necessary as search engines can find keywords in URLs without assistance. Also untrue. Well, not entirely. They are smart and most likely can pick some keywords out of a URL. But they are not that smart. Sometimes it is not obvious where one keyword ends and another begins. For example: expertsexchange.com can be seen as "experts exchange" and "expert sex change". These are obviously two very different topics. In this case a hyphen would clearly separate the keywords and solve this problem.
Will too many hyphens in your domain name will cause the search engines to label your site as spam?
No. This is a myth caused by many spam sites using multiple hyphens in their domain name. Many people have wrongly concluded that only spam sites would need to use more then one hyphen. The truth of the matter is that having more then one hyphen in your domain name will not result in your site being penalized. The more likely scenario is that having multiple hyphens will result in a flag being set at the search engines and a manual review being done to see if the site is spammy or legitimate.
One thing to keep in mind when choosing a domain name with hyphens in it: you users. When using a domain with multiple hyphens you make it more difficult for your human visitors to remember and type in your domain name. Domain names with more then one hyphen should only be used if you are attempting to market your website through the search engines. If you plan on doing offline advertising, including word of mouth, one hyphen or less is recommended.
Does the order of the keywords used in a search affect the search results?
Yes. Do a search and see for yourself.
Does the order of the keywords in a domain name/URL matter?
Yes. You will typically rank better in the SERPs for the phrases that use the words in the same order as your domain and URL then if they are not in the same order.
Does using automated SEO software cause a website to be penalized?
No. This is a common myth that is untrue. If it were true you could get your competitor penalized or banned by using automated SEO software to resubmit their website every 60 seconds. Naturally this does not happen (nor should it).
Some webmasters will try to say to say that Google says in their guidelines that you shouldn't use automated software like Web Position Gold. The reason for this is that most of these tools scrape Google's SERPs to find your site's ranking information. This is in violation of Google's terms of service. Software that uses Google's API is acceptable for querying their servers. Also, if you constantly use SEO software to query a search engine's servers you might find that they ban your IP address to prevent you from using their resources any further. However, this has no effect on your web pages' rankings.
Can search engines see password protected pages?
Search engines are not different from regular users in most ways. They cannot go anywhere that a regular user cannot go. If you have a password protected area of your website that cannot be accessed without a login and password then the search engines cannot see it.
Which is better for SEO: text links or graphical links?
Text links are better for SEO. Text links can contain the anchor text that your page wishes to rank well for and that is an important factor in all three search engines, especially Google. Image links are still valuable but do have less benefits compared to text links. This is true despite image tags having the ALT attribute available. The ALT attribute can contain keywords but thanks to keyword stuffing they now are virtually worthless. (You should be using your ALT attributes for usability and accessibility and not SEO anyway).
Does validation help your ranking?
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: No. But having a webpage that validates is a good idea. A webpage that has been validated to a W3C standard contains no errors and therefore can be easily parsed and understood by the search engine crawlers. An invalid webpage runs the risk of being misinterpreted or just not read at all.
Can the search engines read javascript?
Probably not. But we can't say no for sure because some JavaScript is so easy to read it is hard to imagine that it does not get interpreted. An example of an easy to interpret snippet of JavaScript would be:
| <script type="text/javascript"> document.write('<a href="http://www.example.com">Trying to hide this link from search engines</a>'); </script> |
To ensure that the search engines don't read your JavaScript it should be inserted into a web page using an external file and that directory should be blocked using robots.txt.
What is a quality link?
A quality link is:
I left out high traffic because that is irrelevant from an SEO point of view. But if you're looking at the big picture that would be #4.
Why should I not launch an incomplete website?
Keep in mind this generally covers your "under construction" kind of incomplete sites. You certainly can launch a site and then continually add to it and grow it. Even adding whole new sections. But a site that is obviously incomplete just shouldn't be set loose in the wild until it is ready to go.
Will changing hosts/IP addresses affect my rankings?
No. :)
What is referrer spam?
Referrer spam is when a spammer sends fake referrers to your server. They do this because they know most web stats lists referrers as hyperlinks. They then submit your stats to the search engines in the hopes that they will crawl your stats and find that link. They also hope you click on that link yourself.
What is a doorway page?
From Wikipedia
Quote:
| Doorway pages are web pages that are created to rank high in search engine results for particular phrases with the purpose of sending you to a different page. They are also known as landing pages, bridge pages, portal pages, zebra pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages and by other names. |
What is cloaking
From Wikipedia
Quote:
| search engine optimization technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different from that presented to the users' browser; this is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of whatever is requesting the page. The only legitimate uses for cloaking used to be for delivering content to users that search engines couldn't parse, like Macromedia Flash. However, cloaking is often used to try to trick search engines into giving the relevant site a higher ranking; it can also be used to trick search engine users into visiting a site based on the search engine description which site turns out to have substantially different - or even pornographic - content. For this reason some search engines threaten to ban sites using cloaking. |
Hidden Text/Hidden DIVs
Hidden text/DIVs are only bad if you are using them to manipulate the SERPs. There are many practical uses of hidden text/DIVs that enhance a web page without being malicious.
Good uses of hidden text/DIVs: Dynamic menus, dynamic page content
Bad uses of hidden text/DIVs: Text that is present on the page but cannot be viewed by human beings at any time
Common SEO Myths (These are UNTRUE )
Glossary
Keyword Stuffing - This occurs when a web page is loaded with keywords in the meta tags or in content.
Link Baiting - Writing good content that people will naturally want to link to.
Link Building - Getting more links to point to your webpages. Also known as "acquiring inbound links".
Link Farm - Any group of web pages that all hyperlink to every other page in the group. Done with the intention of manipulating the SERPs and is usually penalized by the search engines.
Organic Search - The search results determined by a search engine's algorithm. The opposite of paid inclusion advertising.
Spider - Also known as a web spider, web robot, or bot is a program which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner.
What is the story with Alexa?
Alexa's rankings are generally considered to be inaccurate at best. Their rankings depend on a user having their toolbar or their spyware installed in order to track their surfing habits. Plus their software is limited to the Windows operating system further limiting the reach of their software and accuracy of their results.
With the possible exceptions of selling/buying a website and applying to and ad service, Alexa serves no useful purpose and important decisions should not be made based on its results.
If you want to improve your ranking in Alexa just install the toolbar into your browser. Be sure to visit your site daily. This will cause your site to jump in the rankings after a few weeks. Get your friends to do it, too, and you can make a significant impact on your rankings.
What would be a good SEO strategy?
Before you write one line of code:
While constructing your website you should do the following:
Immediately after launching your site you should do the following:
If you will pay to promote your website, then submit your site to pay directories
Finally, as part of an ongoing strategy:
Do NOT do the following:
Additional Tips:
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