[Blix]

It is not hard to be barking up the wrong tree when it comes to getting search engine traffic because there is so much out of date information being circulated.

Not only is there out of date or invalid Search Engine Optimization advice getting around, there is also information which if acted upon, can result in your pages being banned.

The Search Engine Optimization tips below should assist the reader in forming a basic understanding of how to create human friendly web pages which are easily understood by the most popular search engines.

Know this. There are thousands of search engines but only two of them will bring you most of the traffic. They are google and yahoo. Another search engine that brings me a little traffic is msn but I do not focus too much on tactics for that engine.

Focus your attention on the engines that will bring you the most visitors first and work your way down.

1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about. The title tag is located right at the top of your document within the head tags. Inserting a keyword or key phrase will greatly improve your chances of bringing targeted traffic to your site.

Make sure that the title tag contains text which a human can relate to. The text within the title tag is what shows up in a search result. Treat it like a headline.

2. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better.

3. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. It is unwise to have keywords in the title tag which are not contained within the body of the page.

Adding the exact same text for your h1 tag will tell the reader who clicks on your page from a search engine result that they have clicked on the correct link and have arrived at the page where they intended to visit. Robots like this too because now there is a relation between the title of your page and the headline.

Also, sprinkle your keywords throughout your article. The most important keywords can be bolded or colored in red. A good place to do this is once or twice in the body at the top of your article and in the sub-headings.

4. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. Search engine robots might determine that all your pages are the same if all your title tags are the same. If this happens, your pages might not get indexed.

I always use the headline of my pages as the title tag to help the robots know exactly what my page is about. A good place to insert the headline is within the h1 tag. So the headline is the same as the title tag text.

5. Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag. Search Engine Optimization pros all agree that these tags are not as important today as they once were. I just place my headline once within the keywords and description tags.

6. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods. A good rule of thumb is if your pages do not contain any words that reflect the content of the site you are linking to, do not link to it.

7. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans. Search engines like to index human friendly pages which contain content which is relevant to the search.

8. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides. This is like the alt tag for images.

My site contains navigation menus on the left and right of the page. The menu consists of links not images. The links are keywords. When you hover over the link with your mouse, the title of the link appears. View the source of this page to see how to add this tag to your links.

9. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.

10. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use a submission service or submission software. Doing so could get your site penalized or even banned.

Here is the submission page for google: http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Submit only once. There is no need to submit every two weeks. There is no need to submit more that one page. Robots follow links. If your site has a nice link trail, your entire site will get indexed.

My site has a nice human friendly link trail which robots follow easily. All my pages get indexed without ever submitting more than the main index page once.

More Search Engine Optimization Tips

Get the facts here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/. This page will explain most of what you should focus on along with what you should forget about.

If you have been thinking about handing over the task of Search Engine Optimization to someone outside of yourself, you should read some warnings before you part with any money. http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

Search Engine Optimization Discussion

Most Search Engine Optimization Professionals will not tell you about the goose that laid the golden egg. The following link will take you to a jealously guarded FREE SEO discussion.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=go...upport.general

You can search the forum for specific questions you may have. I like to just lurk around and read the messages.

The author, Ed Zivkovic owns his own website which contains articles with all sorts of tips for work at home webmasters. Here is the site: http://www.ezau.com

Thanks for the tips. I do have a question. Does it matter if I have a admin section on my site to manage links I put on the site? Do those links get noticed if they are stored in a database and displayed on my site?

[Blix]

Hi, best of course is to put up a seperate site just with links. This "Links site" should be rechable from the main/homepage

[Seph]

I'd have to agree that sitemaps are really important, it's a way to make sure every page gets indexed.

have a read at this page, it explains the google site map feature too.

http://www.webconfs.com/importance-o...article-17.php

[VP]

Originally Posted by Rowtek

Do those links get noticed if they are stored in a database and displayed on my site?

If Google can see them in your source code they will be noticed.

[thebookish]

Great tips Blix

let me add that content have a great rule to do with it, you pages content must be related to you title & meta tags, and have to be original, If robots found that your content is articles from other websites, it will be a disaster

[talia0803]

How different is it when you have a site that is selling a package? Mine is only one page. I have basically a salespage and then a thank you page once the person has ordered, how do I make that google friendly?

Thanks
Talia
PHP Scripts For Niche Web Sites--Make More Money Than Your Wallet Can Hold Right NOW With Niche Marketing And Steady Web Site Traffic

[profanitytalker]

Those tips are awesome. My site is probably gonna generate lots of uniq visitors now.

[hwang]

This is an old post, but with really good content.
I have no idea what's Search Engine Optimization compared with you. I want to read this and learn more, thank you so much for posting here.

[fruitengine_hannah]

hey!!! thanks for posting this information.. it really helps me with my site..
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