SEO Tips - do's and don'ts for search engine optimisation

SEO Tips - do’s and don’ts for search engine optimisation

To get the best search engine ranking web designers and website owners can look at these basic tips to help improve your website position

DON’TS - When optimizing your web pages, there are basic things you should avoid doing.

Avoid cloaking. This is a method that deliver highly unique, optimized pages to the search engines, while presenting a completely different page to surfers. Most major search engines will penalize or ban you altogether should you use this technique.
Avoid SEO companies that guarantee you a number one position or first page rankings. There is no guarantee that any position in the top 10 will be achived, much less position #1. To be safe always ask what techniques your would-be SEO firm uses to achieve a good positioning for your site.
Never use software that automatically submits your sites on a weekly or monthly basis, since it might penalize you in the long run. Most search engines don’t like automatic submissions or multiple submissions - submit once, manually.
Avoid services that submits your site to “thousands of search engines.” Your site will probably be submitted to link farms.
Keep Flash technology out of your site or use sparingly. Do not design your site with the navigation in flash. For better rankings in the search engines, it is best to use plain text links so that the search engine spiders can pick up on all of the pages.
Do not use frames anywhere on your eebsite. This allows designers to display two or more web pages at the same time. The perception is that frames can improve website navigation, but they are browser-dependant and do not create search engine friendly websites. Most search engines do not index framed pages.
Do not create doorway pages. Doorway, or gateway pages, means a “fake” web page is created to rank well for a selected keyword term and redirects website visitors to another, “actual” page on a company’s website. Doorway pages are those generated automatically from a template and is considered spam and penalized by the majority of search engines.

DO’S - For proper optimization, consider these things.

Content is an important factor for high search engine rankings. Make sure that you have good keyword filled content throughout your site. It is generally a good idea to have between three hundred and five hundred words per page, but keep in mind that the quality of the content is more important that the quantity.
Carefully research all of your keywords and key phrases. Look at the content of your pages to find the best keyword/s that relate to your product and try to find how often these keywords are used on the search engines.
Don’t just use the most popular keyword phrases - try to define them by targeting niche or region specific phrases related to your search terms for a more specific market.
Optimize each page of your site for a specific keyword or phrase that relate to that specific page. Don’t reuse the same phrase or keyword throughout the site. Remember that any page of your site can be an entry page.
Add these keywords or keyword phrases to the Title and Meta Description tag of each page within your site. Don’t just repeat the search phrase repeatedly, make sure that the content on the page relates to the keywords contained in your Title and Meta Description tag. Try and repeat these keywords two to three times in the main body of the text without being repetitive.
Search terms should be written out in text, instead of graphics. If you do use pictures, be sure to give them alt tags.
Add your keywords or phrases to text links so that there are internal links between the pages of your site.
Add a sitemap to your site to assist search engines and users to find all the pages within your site. XML sitemaps is a very helpful feature for proper indexing of your site into search engines.
Inbound Links (IBL’s) and Outbound links (OBL’s)
One of the factors search engines use to determine your relevancy to a search term is the number of websites linking to your website (IBL’s). This is an effective way to increase your search engine rankings. Three key success factors for a reciprocal linking strategy are:
1. Quality of links should outweigh quantity
2. Link partners must relate to your site content
3. Partners should link to you from pages listing as few links as possible
Outbound links (OBL’s) are also important as you need to make sure that the links you place on your site to others are relevant to your site topic. The more closely related to your site these links are, the better your chances of being ranked in a higher position.