Basic SEO for your site to get you started

[Scribbller]

Intro

The tutorial is all about getting your site listed on top in Search Engines i.e Search Engine Optimization. First thing you need to do is find the keywords you want to optimize for.

How to find it

ok no probs there is great tool by Overture but i will suggest using this free tool called GoodKeywords which does the same job as Overture but it also supports Search Engines Lycos and Teoma. For example if you want to optimize for the keyword "tech news" then just search fot that keyword in any of the tools I specified... it will show you keywords related to that and no of searches..

Pick the keywords which are related to your site

For example when you search for tech news you will see results like this :

Count Search Term
11770 tech news
351 itt news tech
191 high tech news
60 news tech texas
49 computer tech news
42 bio news tech
34 in itt news tech
30 news tech virginia
29 asia news tech
25 hi tech news
25 sci tech news

Now see what other terms are related to your keyword technology news? Do a couple of searches like that and note down around 15-20 keywords. After that keep the keywords which are searched most on the top.

Title tag

OK, now you need a title tag for the page, which should include the top 3 keywords. Like for "tech news" it can be:

"Latest Tech News, Information Technology News and Other computer raleted news here."

Remember characters should not be more than 95 and should not have more than 3 "," commas - some search engines might cosider more than 3 commas as spam.

Meta Tags

You need the following Meta Tags in web page:

<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META name="keywords" content="keyword1,keyword2,keyword3">
<META name="description" content="brief description about the site">
<META name="robots" Content="Index,Follow">

No need to have other meta tags like abstract, re-visit and all...no one reads it..

Now let me explain everything step by step

<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

This tag is tells content type is html and character set used it iso-8859-1 there are other character sets also but this is the one mosty used..

<META name="keywords" content="keyword1,keyword2,keyword3">

This one should have all your keywords inside starting from keyword with most counts...
keyword tag for our example would be something like :

<META name="keywords" content="tech news,technology news, computer technology news,information technology,software news">

Remember put around 15-20 keywords max not more than that and dont repeat keywords or dont put keywords like this tech news,info tech news,latest tech news and like that...I hope you got what I meant...:P

<META name="description" content="brief description about the site">

Provide short decription about your site and include all the keywords mentioned in the title tag.

Our decription tag could be
<META name="description" content="One Stop for Latest Tech News, Information Technology News, Computer Related and Software news.">

It can be upto 255 characters and avoid using more than 3 commas.

<META name="robots" Content="Index,Follow">

This one is used for search robots..following explanation will help you :

index,follow = index the page as well as follow the links
noindex,follow = dont index the page but follow the links
index,nofollow = index the page but dont follow the links
noindex,nofollow = dont index page, dont follow the links
all = same as index,follow
none = same as noindex,nofollow

Body

Now this is very important part, include all top 3 keywords here, I will suggest just break the keyword and use it...

For example:

YourSiteName.com one stop for all kind of Latest Tech News and Computer Related information and reviews.................

And best thing will be include main keywords in <h#> tags <h1><h2> etc.. and yes, start with <h1> and then move to <h2> <h3> etc.. I know <h1> tag will be too big but CSS can help you there, define small font size in css for H1,H2 tags.

Title and alt tags for images and links

Use some keywords in the tags but dont add all the keywords and if not nccessary then dont use keywords in it basically it should explain what is image all about thats it... Remember add top keyword at least 4 times in the body and other 2 keywords thrice and twice respectively.

Footer

This is very important part for Search Engine optimization, try to include top keywords here and see the effect use site keywords as links i.e.
<a href="news.php">Tech News</a> <a href="software-news.php">Software News</a> etc..

OK thats it done? NO you need to read some more stuff..

Site Map

This is page where you need to put all the links present in your site, this is will help Search Engines to find the links easily and also provide link for site map in footer, coz search engines start scanning the page from bottom.

Robots.txt

This file contains address of directories which should not be scanned by search engines.. more info can be found here. Search engines like google, yahoo ask for robots.txt file.

Valid HTML

Your code should have valid html and doc type, I know its kind of diffucult to follow all the standards but you shall atleast open and close all the tags properly, you can check your page's html online here or you can use this free software called HTML Tidy

OK, all done. Now you need to check your site with SEO Doctor and it will show you the report of your site with solution.

Now I've corrected the errors and can start submitting the site:

Start with Google then Yahoo and then move to altavista, alltheweb and other search engines.. also submit your site to directories like DMOZ and Jayde etc...

Dmoz is a must, coz google, yahoo and many more search engines uses same directory. And remember dont try to SPAM with keywords in these directories, dmoz is handled by Human Editors

OK I have submitted the sites, but still cant see my site on top. Why?

Wait for sometime may be a month or so but keep an eye on your search term, use GoogleAlert - this will show whenever google updates for your keywords, it will mail you the new results. And also check whether your site is listed by Google or not using Google Monitor

Thats about it for now...

[jewboy]

Very excellent post Scribbler. Could not have written it better myself!

AW

[designaddict]

Hi Scribbler, thank you for the tips. However, how can I change the meta tag? i did go to view source, changed the metatag, but it wont actually change the coding in the website. Do i need to reload the site to make the changes works? and how?

Thank you

[ottothan]

Thanks for your advice.

How to use the link polularity to rank in SE first page ? Please explain.

otto

[jack239]

Very good post... as a webmaster I learnt lots of stuffs from your post. Keep it up and please post some topics on how to increase page-rank in Google etc.

[Barrel]

mate - this was back in the day - coming in the top 10 today is not so str8forward (at least not for me!! :) )

[angel21]

Hi
Nice Tips. Thanks for the tips. Really I like it. I also took a look at www.seositecheckup.com – it’s really good site for site’s status check. You have to only Enter your Website’s URL and SEO Site Checkup give you all information of your site like HTML Size uncompressed and compressed, Meta Tags Check , Most common keywords & keywords usage Check, h1 heading & h2 heading status Check, robots.txt file Check, Objects Check, Server signature Check etc.

Bye

[x3mario]

Nice tips. Thanks...

[freeonlinedatin]

Thanks for your tips and advices in seo,you explained effectively.

[globalseo1]

Hi Scribbller, Nice post. Thanks for the tips. gathered lot of information from your post.

[Nkush06]

Nice post.

Thanks

[francisabey]

Very excellent post Scribbler.Thanks for your valuable advice

[jrafique]

Scribbller has provided all the basic things. After this go for link building. Believe me you will have better ranking day by day. Links are directly proportional to the page rank, whether they are inbound or outbound.

[BenDucan]

yea seo is really important to help divert traffic to yer site.

av a look at this bloggin site .can yooh suggest ne gd seo technique that can help seo for it ?

[jrafique]

Nice Post Scribbller. It describes all the basic optimization that is very much necessary.

[x3mario]

Yeah, it's a good post. Keep up the good work dude.

[mickeyy]

If you have your own unique content website, then basic of SEO is On-page Optimization. This means correction of title, keyword etc. . Natural free flowing Unique content alone will help you get a lot in gaining good results in Search engines.

[ap09.com]

Very useful information for newbies.