A Quick Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Do you have some experience with HTML and web site development, but haven't really gotten your feet wet with search engine optimization? Keep reading, because you're in luck. In this article we'll cover some of the more important aspects of SEO, focusing on the changes that you should find easiest to make to your web site. After you read this, you should know where to concentrate your efforts now and going forward.

HTML Tags and SEO

The <Title> tag is the most important part of the page. It is the tag that visitors see in search results, and it should contain your targeted keywords. The title tag can make your page rank or make it disappear from search results. Use this format for web page title tags:

Keywords | Website Name or Brand

It's okay to include only your keywords without the site name, especially if you aren't branding using other Internet marketing methods.

Your <h1> tag is very important. As with the web page title, you should include your targeted keywords in this tag.

Your <h2> tag is next in importance. You should put keyword variations in this tag It's okay to be more natural here.

Your <h3> is less important, but still very useful. Promote keyword variations or subheadings using the H3 tag. You can relax a bit with this one and mention keywords only once in a while.

Now that we've talked about the title tags, let's briefly touch on links so you can see one aspect of why getting the keywords in your title tag is important. An incoming link to your pages is typically formed like so:

Link: <a href ="http://www.site.com/page.htm" title="keyword">anchor text keywords</a>

It's very important to include targeted keywords in anchor text in inbound links. You should also use targeted keywords in internal links, including navigation. The search engines take strong notice of keywords in these positions.

This is true for links that are "followed." But what about links that are designated "nofollow"? Many blogs and other sites make any links in comments automatically nofollow.

Link No followed: <a rel="nofollow" href ="http://www.site.com/page.htm" title="keyword">anchor text keywords</a>

Here's how different search engine treat no follow.

• Google's spider doesn't index the content.
• Yahoo may follow the link to discover content, but gives no credit to the link itself (no pagerank flow, like Google).
• MSN may or may not follow; it's unknown at this time.
• Ask.com does not officially support nofollow. It follows "nofollow" links and passes pagerank.

Finally, let's take a look at the image tag, and how use keywords with it. Here's an example:

Image tag: <img src="your-keyword.jpg" alt="your keyword" />

Include your keywords in the image name and image ALT tag text. The ALT tag is treated like anchor text in image links

Here are a few points to keep in mind as you put your web pages together.

• Keep page size at under 200KB before images, CSS and JavaScript.
• Keep the title tag under 70 characters.
• It's OKAY to ignore the meta keywords tag.
• Use the meta description tag. Content from that tag shows in search results under your main link, hence it can be very helpful in increasing your click-through rate. Keep your meta description under 150 characters and put enticing calls to action that separate you from other competitors on the page. This tag has been proven to increase click through rate from search engines.
• Don't put your content too deep, within many folders. Though Google doesn't have any trouble discovering it, other, smaller search engines may stumble: www.site.com/folder/folder/page.htm is better than www.site.com/folder/folder/folder/folder/folder/page.htm. Folder use is great for organizing content, but if you can cram 50 pages into one folder without having maintenance trouble, do it.