Forum Moderators: open
[1-35]?
36. Content, content, more specialised content.
37. Content, content, consistent content.
38 A few quality links can weigh much more than a lot of non related low quality ones.
39. Make tables make sense. 'Name' 'Born' 'Died' column headings won't help the SERPs. Rewrite it, row by row as: Queen Elizabeth was born in 1533 and died in 1603. Fancy CSS will tabulate that if you let it!
40. Cut out the 10000000 pages of recycled trash (that is, if you still want to rank next month).
41. Adjust your game-plan based upon your market sector - every sector requires a different strategy so don't think what worked for selling widgets will work for philsophy.
42. Stop bots from indexing pages which you don't want in the index, especially dynamic sections which have no relevance to the SERPs.
43. Build everything you want indexed so that it works perfectly with javascript, flash, java, activex and css disabled.
44. Check regularly for dead links or old links that are redirecting to something else. Update or delete as appropriate. You won't get SEO brownie points for relevant outbound links unless they're working!
45. And my second tip is similar, but more localized - use a solid semantic structure for your page. That makes the algorithm's job a whole lot easier.
46. Use a sound Information Architecture for your entire website. This includes, but is not limited to, choosing menu labels that make keyword sense (without stuffing) and also are no-bariner intuitive for your visitor.
47. Eliminate or make less prominent all links to fluff pages (like member profiles).
48. Link to your less tasty pages from the site map.
49. Create a site map.
50. Create content that a dot edu, gov, or .us will find useful to link to. Kind of like social engineering, where you look at the behavior then tailor your response/approach to appeal and fit in with that behavior. In this case you're looking at what the pages are linking to and create pages to match that profile.
51. Plan the site architecture using a rational naming hierarchy so that the folders make sense and are meaningful when seen in the SERPs.
(example.com/cheap-widgets/) Those get highlighted in the SERPs and helps draw attention to your listing. Inbound links can form the keywords in the anchors, etc.
52. Plan the site so it can easily change web technology
53. Plan the site so it is scalable
54. Link out to quality external sites where appropriate.
55. Become a webmasterworld.com supporter. Access to much more specific and fine tuning information there than any book you could ever read or any list of tips could cover.
56. Keyword research
57. Keyword research
58. Keyword research
59. Check how many levels down a page is for spidering purposes
60. Zenu to Check for Links In To Page
61. Run Zenu or similar for links out on page internal navigation
62. Check for percentage duplicate content across pages
63. Use the w3c validator on ALL of your pages, I'd recommend validating the css as well but that's (css)
64. Build sites to pass an honest-to-goodness human inspection, and not just an algorithmic inspection.
65. To quote W3C, "Cool URIs don't change."
66. a strategic plan for more relevant inbound links to your website
67. Never, ever, delete a 301 redirect. & Always set up 301 redirects for renamed or deleted pages.
68. Never rename a page unless there is a real benefit. & Remember to delete the obsolete page from the server.
69. Check that what you think you have done = what you have actually done.
70. Decide which SE you are optimizing for.
71. Avoid doing anything that can accidentally trip a filter.
72. Use meta keywords tags, but with a few well-chosen keywords.
73. Ensure keywords used in titles, meta descriptions, and meta keywords actually appear on the page and in significant numbers.
74. Ensure what the SE sees = what the user sees.
75. Be clear what your SEO goal is.
76. Make sure you are in a Trusted Hosting Environment.
77. Have a clear "button" where clients can take an action
78. Show your contact details.
79. Do not forget to offer other payment options giving details ( bank account number etc. )
80. have a "verisign" os similar certificate
81. When you offer the possibility to pay on-line, be sure to use https...
82. give the clients the possibility to pay on-line.
83. Distinguish between SEO, optimization for normal web users, and Usability.
84. links links links
85. no 301 or 302 redirects unless the URL has actually been changed
86. domain name canonicalisation: redirect non-www to www or vice versa
87. consistent and correct server response codes
88. unique description meta tag for every page
89. include keyword in title pages
90. accurate title pages
91 - Make sure whatever you're trying to sell/promote/accomplish is user friendly and your call to actions are clear and easy to find on the pages that your users land on.
92 - try and make your code as lean as possible, compared to the actual content. offload all your affiliate links and ads to external javascript, so they don't clutter up the code. most of them don't work with javascript turned off anyway, so it doesn't matter. get rid of all the <br>'s, and other useless tags. you can do all that presentational stuff with CSS.
93- everyweek a few links
94- everyday fresh content
95. Efficient SE-friendly navigation.
96. user-friendly-url's (with dashes between words, not underscores)
97. Don't neglect your sitemaps, don't leave broken links in them (Many forget to update their links after a major structure change) as they can help search engines crawl the site much easily.
98 Alt and title tags for images and links.
99 Use valid, lean code for your site. This has helped my sites tremendously.
100. Use the H1, H2 and H3 tags for what they are meant to be. Use H1 tag once on the page, H2 for a few of the sub headers, and H3 for less important titles.
70. Decide which SE you are optimizing for.
80. have a "verisign" os similar certificate
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Finaly,
here's some good advice from TEDSTER on Keyword Titles [webmasterworld.com]:
As in many things, the devil's in the details. In this case, the important detail is what exactly you are doing to "optimize". For example, if a "big" keyword appears too often in your navigational anchor text, you may never rank well for it even though you rank well for phrases that contain it.
Don't have any concern for the meat keywords tag at all - it really is a dead duck. And the meta description may have some influence, but it's not primary.
However, the title element is the powerhouse. It's good to follow the old carpenter's adage here: measure twice, cut once. There is some evidence that frequent changes to title elements can cause problems.
If you hope to compete on really big "trophy" keywords, most of what you will need is backlinks. The off-page factors will make the difference. So I'd start with the best title element you can come up with from the beginning, and move on.
I think that anytime someone acting as an SEO specialist mentions the need for links in such a manner they should at least offer the SEO Greenhat the concept that an incoming link (a link originating from another web site) is not usually as valuable as an internal anchor link (from one web page to another within the same web site). Google has long ago, in the deployment of Pagerank technology, ascertained that it "counts" and awards merit for links that flow from one webpage to another, not necessarily from one web site to a web page on another web site; web page to webpage. This is why it is of paramount importance that a webmaster create websites that are capable of evolving in many directions as new or revised content needs to continuously emerge in order to keep the spiders interested in coming back. In SEO, to become complacent is often the instigator to SERP ranking drops. A good SEO tip could have been "Create new webpages and craft well-optimized web content; then keep doing so for long term top rankings in meaningful keyphrase competitions requires the insertion of fresh fodder for the search engines to find and rank.".
Finally, an SEO newbie must be instructed to concentrate, almost exclusively, on optimizing web page components; commonly known as the on-site factors (Titles, Descriptions, headings, paragraphs, anchor linking structure, webpage and image naming conventions, tag attributes ...) but most importantly, the search engine optimization student must learn and always practice the craft of SEO copywriting.
