Forum Moderators: open
I thought its about time I contributed something useful to this forum. Having researched the current best SEO practices (shocked at the lack of resources out there!) I submit my findings. As far as I know this is up to date information, please feel free to put me right if this is not the case.
Also, if anyone knows of a single resource that reports this informtion on a regular basis please let me know. (may be worht me setting up that resource actually)
SEO Best Practices as of 23/10/03:
Title:
* Length - 70 characters (inc. spaces)
* Consider alphabetical priority
* Must contain keyword
Description Tag:
* 150 character limit
* Do not repeat keywords more than 3 times
* Place most common keywords towards the deginning of the description.
Keyword Tag:
* Maxiumum 200 charcters
* Do not use comma's
* Place most common keywords first
* If possible, consider alphabetical priority
* Do not repeat KW's more than 3 times
Body Tag:
* KW density should be between 3-10%
* KW proximity - place KW close to each other
* KW prominence - position KW's as near to the beginning of the content as possible and use KW's as headings
* The first 150 words should explain what the page is about.
* Include a KW in all text links if possible
* Keep body of the text in one or two solid blocks rahter than spreading the text arouund the page.
* Use KW's in Alt tags
* Do not overload the page with different topics, keep each page dedicated to a certain topic.
Thats the basics, please feel free to dispute my findings!
Take Care.
>Do not use comma's
Inktomi is the only major search engine to consider keyword tags and states that you should use commas.
Content is the food - I think that it helps if the bots can eat and don't have to spit out a bunch of markup.
I've found that our rankings have increased slightly by not using commas in the keyword tag, and we rank for slighlty more phrases now.
Has anyone else seen this trend?
