Search Engine Optimization is a very hot topic on 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.
Sometimes it is easy to get carried away with SEO though. In my opinion, the best technique is to keep it simple and apply a bit of common sense.
Most SEO plugins will take care of the common architecture related stuff for you. So in this article I will only focus on techniques that you need to do yourself (or be aware of).
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 proper anchor text for inter-links. Don’t use “here”, “there” etc for the anchor text (if you can avoid it).
- Optimize the images, always create alt tags and write description in the alt tag.
- Use search engine friendly permalinks. Try not to have too many ‘&’, ‘?’, ‘!’ etc characters in the URL. Sometimes it is unavoidable but try to keep it to a minimum.
- Use hyphens (-) between words to improve readability.
- Do not use underscores (_) in URLs, use hyphens (-) instead.
- Do not use session id in URLs. If you are using good hosting then you shouldn’t have to worry about this one.
- Avoid using capital letters in URLs. Windows servers are case sensitive. Keep them lowercase so there’s no confusion.
- Use internal linking when possible and appropriate.
- Use sticky posts (if you can and if it applies to you).
- Have a category description paragraph.
- Let the visitors subscribe to category specific RSS feed. (Use category specific RSS plugin for WordPress)
- 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 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 Visitors don’t like outdated content.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.
Here is a list of articles you should read to learn more SEO techniques:
- How To Ensure That Your Blog Is Never Penalized By Google
- 6 Simple Strategies to Get Blog Posts Indexed Quickly
- Short All-You-Need Guide to Keyword Density
- 6 SEO Strategies That Can Generate Highly Targeted Traffic
- Blog Commenting Strategies to Improve Search Ranking
Have you identified any SEO mistakes that you commonly make?
Great tips, i won’t forget to set them in my SEO strategy. thanks
I should post your list above my computer and double check before I post or update anything. I have been committing several of these errors. Thanks for sharing!
very useful tips you provided. I will try to use the same for my websites.
I adore when someone reveals such an information. This is really nice and useful for all of us. Thanks!
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Basic and important tips. Thanks for this information.
With so much stuff out there it’s easy to forget the most fundamental of things. This is a great list to keep in mind and remember! Thanks!
Good information. SEO is changing on a daily basis, but the stuff you covered here has been true forever and I suspect will continue to be correct for some time to come.
You have mentioned almost all essential seo tricks, whats new?
Simple but important .. thanks allot
Very useful quick tips here, thanks! and some useful ones in the comments also
Great tips here. Also worth remembering to noindex your categories to avoid any dupe content issues – something I always forget!
@Gina, thank you for sharing the in depth SEO techniques.
You missed a few really important SEO techniques for your blog so I thought that I would add them for you here:
1) Use the EXACT same keyword in 4 places in every post — the title, the tags, anchor text for an internal link (that goes to another post or page on your blog or site that uses the same keyword), and anchor text for an external link (that goes to another site that uses the same keyword). Note that if you want to improve your page rank and search engine rankings, you need a combination of internal links (these say that your site is well organized for the searchers who get there), outbound links to other well organized sites (this says that you know who the experts in your market are) and backlinks or inbound links (this says that other experts know who you are). So, if you put your keyword in all 4 places, then you have at least 2 of these 3 types of links in every post!
2) Don’t just link from your post to another post using your keyword as anchor text. Instead, create DEEP links that go from post #1 to post #2, from post #2 to post #3, from post #3 to page #4, etc. Each time, use the same keyword as anchor text. You should be creating deep internal links, deep outbound or external links, and deep inbound or backlinks. With as few as only 40 backlinks (about 30% were deep) and only 25 to 30 internal and external links, I’ve been able to EASILY get a page rank of 5 and it sticks too!
3) If you want to rank well in Google, use a ? at the end of your post’s title. The algorithm will actually reward you with higher search engine rankings when you do. What’s even better is that most people using search engines are looking for how to solve their problems. They’re thinking in terms of questions anyway! For example, a typical search might be for “how to do you get rid of blah blah blah?” where “blah blah blah” is your keyword”. While the searcher may not include the ? in the search phrase, the searcher will be a lot more likely to click on your search result when they use your title phrased as a question!
I hope this helps! A systemized approach to blogging can make it a lot easier to get great search engine rankings easily!
Thanks for this advices ,but may you miss some tips like:
1-don’t use pictures unless you optimize it for seo
2-don’t the same keywords.When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking)
3-dont try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. or make size very small
4-Submitting Identical Pages (duplicate content).
Great list. Thanks for sharing this post. If you get the chance, feel free to visit my site.
Good points that many tend to overlook.
Thank you!
thanks for ur info.
Thanks. Excellent tips. I will implement these techniques on my website. Thanks for your information.
Very interesting post – I’m definitely going to bookmark you! Thank you for your info
Yeah I have seen lots of blog and website implement rel=”nofollow”. ACtually I couldn’t understand what does that mean. Thanks for clearing us.
Oh My,…
I thought, i forgot the first tips. thanks fot this tricks
Really interesting publish..Iam really much enjoyed through reading your own website..this article has provided the good info..Thanks for the actual info given..
I am impressed by reading your article. These are great tips. I really enjoyed the post! thanks for sharing helpful tips. 🙂
I tried searching for SEO techniques a lot. Thank god I stopped by here. Great post.
useful, I just studied seo for 1 month
This is a great, comprehensive list. Sometimes, it feels as though checking items off the list takes longer to do than actually creating the post. For internal linking, what helps me as a plug-in called smart links…it will automatically link keywords so that you do not have to do it! Thanks again for the great reminder list…you are not the only one who forgets 😉
Sticky posts are great, although I was never been able to confirm its impact on overall SEO aspect of the blog – one way or another
thanks buddy
Category specific subscriptions are a wonderful way to get new subscribers. Sometimes I’d like to subscribe to someone’s blog, because I live their insight on certain topics. But I don’t want every little thing they publish sent to me.
I can grasp all 15 techniques you mentioned except #8 (use sticky post). What do you mean by that and what we want to accomplish with it? Please enlight.
Thanks
I have printed your tips I see it like a check list for a plot of a jet liner. Thank you for taking the time to type them up for us.
Thank youf or the SEO tips, Am working on my own SEO without a clue where to start until I stumbled accross this , thank you kindly sirs
These Tips are very usefull for SEO purpose . so i m very thanksfull to u sharing for all information.Where i can find information about the point 1. How i put nofollow to the links on my posts?
Thanks for the tips. Where i can find information about the point 1. How i put nofollow to the links on my posts?
Thank you for hosting such a useful site. this site was not just knowledgeable but also bvery imaginative too. There are only few people who can think to write technical stuff that creatively. we look for information on this subject. I Myself went over several websites to acquire information with respect to this.I will check back often !!
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
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 ?
:-)))
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.
You should change your title to “15 useful tips in SEO”, or 15 SEO techniques I forget to do. It is confusing actually.
Great Post really useful for new blogger like me.
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.
Thanks for this. Nothing revolutionary but pretty useful.
Hi Phil, Glad to hear that you liked the plugins. Thanks for sharing some SEO tips too.
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
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.
thanks for sharing this information with us.
Wow! very nice post… thank you for sharing these search engine optimization tips.
Excellent stuff!!
Rafael Montilla
hey man its really interesting…..i was searching for thes stuff….finally you website ended my search…gud buddy..