Top 15 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques I Forget to do
Categories: Featured, SEO
Search Engine Optimization is a very hot topic in the World Wide Web. After all, everybody wants to rank higher and come up on the first page of Google search and get more traffic. I have identified and made a list of top 15 SEO practices that I tend to forget quite often. These simple SEO techniques if practiced properly can make a significant difference as to how my pages are ranked in the Search Engine Queries.
- Use rel=”nofollow” tag on low value links to not pass the page rank juice. For example ‘Read the rest of the entry’, ‘About’, ‘Contact’ etc.
- Use proper anchor text for interlinks. Don’t use ‘here’ or ‘there’.
- Optimize the images, always create alt tags and write description in the alt tag.
- Use search engine friendly permalinks. Make sure the URLs do not have ‘&’, ‘?’, ‘!’ etc characters.
- Use hyphens (-) between words to improve readability.
- Do not use underscores (_), use hyphens (-) instead.
- Do not use session id in URLs.
- Use sticky posts.
- Use tag clouds.
- Have a category description paragraph.
- Let the visitors subscribe to category specific RSS feed. (Use category specific RSS plugin for WordPress)
- Use internal linking when possible and appropriate.
- Use sub-directories rather than sub-domains when possible. Sub-domains do not share link love from the main domain as it is treated as a different domain.
- Research the target audience and aim the site content appropriately.
- Keep the content up to date. Visitors don’t like outdated content. Updating the content frequently also attracts the Search engines spiders to index the web pages frequently.
Going forward I will try to use this list to optimize my web pages for search engines. Have you identified any SEO mistakes that you commonly make?
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#1 by da on March 7, 2009 - 5:56 am
hey man its really interesting…..i was searching for thes stuff….finally you website ended my search…gud buddy..
#2 by Sofas on March 12, 2009 - 5:33 pm
Excellent stuff!!
Rafael Montilla
#3 by Eugenie on March 20, 2009 - 6:34 pm
Wow! very nice post… thank you for sharing these search engine optimization tips.
#4 by Steve Patterson on May 29, 2009 - 9:46 pm
thanks for sharing this information with us.
#5 by simmons on August 1, 2009 - 8:00 am
finally someone who write with sense. There are so many post who believe to share a great knowlodge…but no one is simple and give right content like that.
Thank you.
simmons´s last blog ..Cambiare l’icona del menù applicazioni in UBUNTU
#6 by Phil Henderson on October 22, 2009 - 1:43 am
As usual great content!
I’m loving your plugins… We are just about to launch one site using Mike Filsaimes Butterfly Marketing Script which has taken a number weeks to set up and another http://www.yourwebsense.com which we have installed both your WP Affiliate Plugin and WP eStore plugins, built in under 1 week (not due to launch yet so parts of site innactive)… The speed in which we were able to create the back office affiliate area and the eStore totally blew us away…
Regarding your SEO tips.. All-In-One SEO is a good plugin to install… I’d also recommend people do a “google” for Jeff Johnsons free traffic getting plugin (software) this walks you through a good process that will ensure your blog/site is well SEO’d …
Your tip regarding images is absolutely “spot-on” … Google are paying a great deal of attention to images and are actually showing these in their results pages. It’s also amazing how many people search for a “product” by it’s image.
If you are selling “blue-widgets” then have the image named as something like “blue-widget.jpg” , not “img2345.jpg” BUT if you have a number of images for the same product, please use alternatives, for example… “blue-widget-small.jpg”, “blue-widget-left.jpg”, “large-blue-widget.jpg”, “woman-blue-widget.jpg” (don’t use “and”, “with”, “or” etc in your image titles. And also make the description USER friendly not “keyword stuffed”…
There’s also a plugin you can use http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/seo-image/
I tend to manually SEO my images and the images for my clients just to ensure there are no duplicates etc.
Sorry for the long post…
Thanks once again for providing a great product and also for providing great content on your site
Phil Henderson
#7 by admin on October 22, 2009 - 2:50 am
Hi Phil, Glad to hear that you liked the plugins. Thanks for sharing some SEO tips too.
#8 by Alex on November 1, 2009 - 6:18 am
Thanks for this. Nothing revolutionary but pretty useful.
Alex´s last blog ...edu backlinks
#9 by Xcellence IT on November 11, 2009 - 7:00 am
excellent article… thank you for sharing this… with us…
useful tips for all round seo.
Best Regards
Xcellence IT
India based web & business solutions expert.
#10 by Gaurav on November 11, 2009 - 8:15 pm
Great Post really useful for new blogger like me.
Gaurav´s last blog ..Configure Your Gmail pop3 account
#11 by Chrisile from Search Engine Optimisation on November 22, 2009 - 8:26 am
You should change your title to “15 useful tips in SEO”, or 15 SEO techniques I forget to do. It is confusing actually.
#12 by Jessica on December 5, 2009 - 5:22 am
Great summary. One other mistake I’ve seen is only using one word keywords – makes it tough to hone in on the niche markets and gives up the longtail keyword advantage.
#13 by Costera on December 26, 2009 - 1:49 am
Is it a list of MISTAKES or a list of USEFUL TIPS ?
Sounds confuning …
Sould we AVOID these 15 mistakes, or APPLY these 15 advices ?
#14 by social bookmarking site on December 28, 2009 - 12:44 pm
Very informative article. I really forget to use some of the above tips I will do it now as the PR is going to update in a month or two
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