Basic Search Engine Optimization

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Basic Search Engine Optimization

what to do?

newnewbie1

11:14 am on Jul 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

Hi!

What are some basic search engine optimization steps that one could take to improve their Google listings? Are their any? It seems like the only way to get any half-way decent listings is to hire a search engine consultant.

The only thing we really did was to put a descriptive title on every page. Should we go back and add meta-tags? Or does that even matter anymore?

Mohamed_E

12:29 pm on Jul 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

> It seems like the only way to get any half-way decent listings is to hire a search engine consultant.

Or become one yourself!

Read Brett's Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone [webmasterworld.com], you will be amazed how much you can learn from one post.

dougmcc1

4:32 pm on Jul 19, 2003 (gmt 0)

You can probably do without the META keywords tag, but you should use the META description tag. It really doesn't affect your rankings, but SE's use it to tell the user what your page is about. Without that tag the SE's have to guess and sometimes their guess isn't very good.

You also might want to look into using a DOCTYPE tag at the very top of your page. I use:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">