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A List of SEO Practices That Work, And a Few New Ones

Webmasters have been optimising sites for the search engines for a number of years now and within that time there has been a lot written - some good and some extremely bad - about website optimisation.

However, in all that time there has been some certain SEO rules that have been rock solid in helping to get your site ranked better within the search engine rankings. These rules are the groundwork that any SEO Company should always apply when starting to optimise a website.

So, the following is a list of on-page factors that are extremely effective, when done correctly, and a few extra pieces of advice that we have found works well for SEO purposes.

Title Tag:

Perhaps, the most important part of on-page optimisation is effective use of the Title Tag. It helps both the search engines determine what your page is about and also good Title Tags help with user click-through rates when your site is listed in the search engine ranking pages.

Description Tag:

Use this to further aid the search engines in describing what information is present within the page. There is a danger that if the tag is left blank or barely describes the page at all the search engines will pick their own description from the content of the page. Remember the information contained within the Description Tag is shown in the search engine ranking pages and again can either help or hinder people clicking through to your site.

Headers:

Semantic headers should be used within the page. Use the H1 tag at the start of your content to help reinforce what the page is about by placing your keywords within the H1 tag. Make sure it reads well and do not try and spam this tag or use it more than once within the page.

If you need to use more headers then use them semantically i.e. H1, H2, H3 etc... you can use CSS to help make sure that your headers are all the same font face, height and weight.

File and Folder Naming Conventions:

When you create your pages try and use the keywords you are targeting within the naming structure of the file. Use hyphens to separate words, underscores are also becoming more favoured by the search engines but hyphens are better from a usability perspective. Never run all your words together as there can be more room for error when the search engines index your page.

Example:

Hyphens; my-first-web-page.html

Underscores: my_first_web_page.html

Combined: myfirstwebpage.html

Images:

If you are using an image in your web design page then use the alt attribute to help explain what the image is all about. This helps the search engines understand in textual content what the image actually is. It can also help drive traffic to your site via Image Search. From an accessibility point-of-view please do not try and spam the alt attribute as people with screen readers do not want to hear a certain keyword repeated umpteen times when they roll over your image.

Internal Linking:

I often come across sites that would rank better if the site owner or webmaster applied some simple internal linking methods. An example of this is when pages linking back to the Home page just use the word "Home" in the anchor text. Instead be more effective! If your site is about "Pets" and one of the keywords being used in your Homepage is "Pets" then use this in your anchor text link back to the Homepage i.e. "Back to Pets Homepage".

Sitemaps:

Make sure you have a sitemap in place for your site even if its only 3 or 4 pages long. Better yet get your site registered with the search engines via their Webmaster Central Portals and submit an XML sitemap of your site each time it is updated.

Error Handling:

Always use a 404 error handling page. This helps with site maintenance if you're constantly archiving older pages plus its just good practice. If you are not sure how to set-up a 404 error page then just contact your host and they will quickly set it up for you.

Robots.txt File

Another must have. This tells visiting search engine crawlers (bots or spiders) which folders or files they have access to crawl. So, if you don't want them anywhere near your admin or images folder then disallow them access within the robot.txt file.

Content:

When it comes to content I forget about the search engines for a while. I want my content to register with the person browsing my site. By all means use some keywords in here but try and keep things natural. If you have something meaningful to say in your web copy then other sites will link to your page much more readily if they feel it reads well and the message comes across.

If you spam your content then not only will people find your web copy incomprehensible and leave your site as quickly as they entered it but you will also find it hard to acquire natural inbound links to your site and internal web pages.

Blogging and Social Networking:

One of the major contributors to driving traffic to your site is participating in SEO 2.0 techniques. By creating a blog you can create a buzz about your site or product by posting interesting and relevant content and thus gain trusted readership which will also drive traffic to your site by word-of-mouth or natural back links to your content.

Social networking works with sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Facebook to name a few. You join up and become a member of the community where you actively participate in submitting and voting on content that you and other members of the community have submitted.

This allows you to promote your own site in a non-spammy manner and in-turn make friends with other like-minded people in your community.