Hi all :)
Since we have a new section, I will continously feed it, and here is my first article on optimization of pages.. I will look forward for your submission..
Search engine friendly pages help you achieve high ranking in the search results. If your pages are search engine friendly, then you will be placed at the top of search results for your optimized keywords. This article will not cover advance techniques but it will certainly help you achieve high ranking by optimizing and creating new pages.
1. Before creating any page, you must know for which specific keywords are you creating / optimizing page. Concentrate on those specific keywords, use them throughout the web page. Don't flood your page with those keywords, search engine robots are clever enough to point spam, and if you will use those keywords a lot of times in a page, spam flag will be triggered, which may hurt your current ranking.
2. Start your page title with that specific keyword, for example you are concentrating on a keyword "web hosting", then use this keyword in the title. Don't use more than 5 words in the <title> tag. Use three important meta tags in each page i.e. title, description and keyword. These three meta tags are most important and are MUST to have in any page.
3. The first paragraph is very crucial and important, the search engines (robots) usually pick the first 30-40 words for analysis and ranking, although it doesn't mean that only first paragraph is important. You should use your specific keywords throughout the page.
4. Use your keyword in headline <h1> tag. There have been a lot of discussion on the headline tags, most of the experts believe headline "<h1>" and bold text "<b>" is given extra weight, I have personally tested this and have reached in top ten positions for a specific keyword. Do not use <h1> tag so often, use it only 2-3 times in one page, you can easily change the style of <h1> tag using css. For example
h1 { font-family: tahoma, helvetica; font-size: 12px; color: #434D4B;}
5. Use "alt" and "title" tags for images, search engine robots cannot identify graphics and / or flash based SWF files, so always use "alt" tag and put your specific keyword in it. I personally renamed some of my images to my specific keyword which also helps in ranking, for example I developed a web hosting site, I had an image of server and its name was zxcv123.gif I renamed it to web-hosting-server.gif It's a good technique for concentrating on specific keywords.
6. Use keyword rich files names, for example if your page is about hosting and you rename it newpage.html, it doesn't make sense, use something like web-hosting.html. It not only helps search engines but these URLs are easy to remember. The same applies to the folders / directory names.
7. Anchor text, is the most important factor in high ranking. Anchor text is the mask of any URL, the text which leads to any link. Do not use more than 100 links per page as recommended by Google, as in our case we are concentrating on "web hosting" keyword, you should use "dedicated server", "reseller hosting" etc in your page for more keywords, and link other pages of your website, less the links will be on a page, the more pageRank weight will be transferred to the linked page.
8. Do not use frames, most of the search engines cannot follow frames, use it if you do not have any alternative. The page loaded in frames cannot be read by the search engine robot, so anything or any optimization you do in that page is invisible to the search engine robot.
9. Search engines robots are clever than you think, so do not try to cheat them, you will find tons of tricks to cheat search engines, but what if those tricks get you banned from search engines? If you have found a good trick and you feel it can get you banned simply read search engine guidelines, or ask from the gurus in online SEO communities.
10. Content is king, you might have read this a thousand times, and this is what search engines love. So before creating a new page, collect and write useful, keyword rich and informative content for your page. Do not copy and paste other's content, although there is no proof of "duplicate content penalty" but just don't use it. Search engines love fresh content.
Finally, do not use any tricks to cheat search engines, like hidden text, hidden variable names with keyword, cloaking etc. Follow the Top Ten Tips I have mentioned and you will see the results yourself, don't expect to see the results in one to two days, you will see results in 2-3 months or even more. For one of my test I have seen results after 5 months and reached top 10 positions. Good luck with optimizing and creating search engine friendly pages.
best regards
- Ali..
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