5
Essential SEO Techniques
Search Engine Optimization is becoming a more and more complicated area
especially
with the recent updates and data refresh done on the search engines'
index. However,
the basic concept for good ranking does not change. The following
illustrates five most
important SEO techniques as summarized from the Google Webmaster
Guidelines that
all webmasters should follow.
The first step into SEO is to create a site that allows the bots from
the search
engines to crawl. A web page is as good as offline if it does not
appear in the
search engine's index. It is advised to use clean and static urls for a
page rather
than lengthy url with complicated parameters.
It is stated clearly in the Google Webmaster Guidelines that they do
not index urls
with session ids. In addition, they will not index pages that require
user
authentication as the bots visit pages like a general user. Search
engines also
cannot guarantee that they will index all the dynamic urls. Therefore,
in order to
facilitate the search engines in crawling all the pages, static urls
are always
preferred.
The second technique is to create a site that holds unique and fresh
content. Search
engines like to index fresh content. A frequently updated site will
find the bots
returning to visit at a shorter interval. Adding unique content
regularly will also
help other users to find the site more easily as these pages will add
on to the
respective domain’s search index in the search engine
database.
Third technique is equally important as it ensures that search engines
can crawl
every page in a site successfully. Having a text link navigation system
is highly
recommended for SEO purposes as it is almost guaranteed that the bots
will visit all
the pages via the text links. Avoid using JavaScript and Flash
navigation system, as
the bots will ignore them. Implement a Google Sitemap is also
recommended, as this
will help the search engines to find any pages that may be missed
during the crawl.
After implementing a search engine friendly navigation system, the
Webmaster should
focus on the keywords allocation and place the targeted keywords in
appropriate
places. Of the entire HTML markup, the most important tags to take note
are the title
and the headers. It is advised to have a different title for every page
and to adopt
a proper hierarchy of headers so that search engines know what are the
content that
the pages are focusing.
The final step towards a good search engine ranking is to attract
organic links.
Organic links are natural links from content related pages. Google only
takes into
account of these natural links when ranking and indexing pages as
stated in their
guidelines. Although linking from the unrelated pages does not hurt its
rankings, they
will not help either.
About the Author
KC is a SEO consultant with several years of related experiences. His
advice has
helped several Webmasters to increase their SERP. KC owns a SEO site
that provides
Free SEO tools
and free SEO eBooks. He is also the founder of CSS Layout blog.
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