Design Notes: A CSS Web Designer’s Blog

Top Ten Search Engine Optimization Tips

July 23rd, 2005

Clearly search engine optimization is a very complex process that cannot be reduced to a list of ten points. However, I hope this list helps you understand search engine optimization more completely. Perhaps it will keep you out of trouble with search engines and web directories to which you submit your Web site.

Six On-Page Factors

These are directly related to how you design your Web pages and what content you choose to include.

1. The era of optimizing pages for search engine traffic based on a single keyword is long gone. You will get better results by concentrating on several key phrases and variants that accurately represent your content and offerings. These should be used especially in page titles, headers, and anchor text.
2. Group Web pages by theme into directories (folders) named using key phrases and use a key phrase rich index page to access the files in each folder.
3. You are writing for people. Always. Search engines will bring visitors to your site, but visitors will not be impressed by keyword stuffed pages that contain useless repetition. Most likely, they will never return.
4. Never choose a word by default. (I admit this is a tall order.) Intentionally choose words targeted to your audience’s interest and the needs of search engines.
5. Be cautious about using any document type other than HTML since it may delay or even prevent a search engine from indexing the file. If you rely on search engines to bring browsers to a page, always avoid putting text into other formats. The web is still a text medium even though it is also able to serve multi-media content.
6. Keep your content to code ratio as high as possible for higher search engine visibility. One of the best ways to do this is to master semantic XHTML and CSS.

Four Off-Page Factors

These factors are related to incoming and outgoing links.

1. Incoming links from well ranked Web sites that feature content in your niche are strongly connected to your level of search engine visibility. Examples of these Web sites are Yahoo!, Open Directory, Yahoo! Local, Google Local, Zeal, and many regional or specialty directories such as a Better Business Bureau, Professional Association, or Chamber of Commerce.
2. Because of the importance of anchor text in determining how relevant your site is to a search phrase, it is useful to suggest appropriate keyword rich anchor text to anyone who offers you an incoming link.
3. Never link to a Web site unless you are convinced it offers content that adds substantial value to your visitor’s experience. This especially applies to reciprocal linking schemes.
4. Avoid linking with Web sites that have a Google PageRank of zero on their home page. This is sometimes an indication that the site has been banned by Google and may affect the reputation of your own Web site. Unless the page you are linking to is less than two months old, it should have a PageRank assigned. However, some pages buried deep within a Web site may never be assigned a PageRank by Google, so the home page is the strongest indicator of possible problems.

Though I cannot assign credit for all of these ideas to any one source, none of them are completely original with me. I have relied on David George’s The ABC of SEO and have been influenced by Shari Thurow’s Search Engine Visibility.

Entry Filed under: SEO

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