Search Engine Optimization Tips you should and should not be doing on your web pages to make them rank higher in search engines. Search Engine Optimization Tips list was written by SEO London, our partner agency, and looks at more than just the basics of SEO, so even if you’ve got some of the factors, you may not have everything. Scroll to the end of the list to look at the things you should never be doing, as well as the things you should always do at the beginning.
Write great content (HIGH PRIORITY)
Great content is where it all starts. You can have all the keywords in the world, but if your content is no good, people won’t stick around on your site and search engines won’t find your site valuable.
Write unique content (HIGH PRIORITY)
Unique content is important too. You need to provide content that has different information than what is on other sites and other Web pages.
Add new content all the time (HIGH PRIORITY)
Sites that have new content added on a regular basis are seen as more reliable than sites that rarely do. This also helps you to increase the amount of relevant content on your site, which also improves your rankings.
Create a great keyword phrase (HIGH PRIORITY)
The first thing you should do when working on search engine optimization is find a great keyword phrase for that page. You shouldn’t try to optimize your entire site to one keyword phrase – instead focus on writing pages for specific keywords and phrases.
Choose a phrase that is popular, but not too popular (HIGH PRIORITY)
When trying to decide on a keyword phrase, you want to find one that is popular but not extremely popular. This may seem counter-intuitive, but the reality is that extremely popular keywords are very desirable and so very competitive. It’s better to try to optimize for keywords that you can rank higher. You’ll get more pageviews from a less popular keyword when you’re on the first or second page of the search engines, than from a super popular keyword that you only make it to page 50 of search engines.
Write an accessible site (HIGH PRIORITY)
Accessible HTML is accessible to both search engine spiders and screen readers. The more accessible you make your pages, the easier it will be for search engines to read and rank your pages.
Use the keyword phrase in your title tag (HIGH PRIORITY)
The title tag is one of the most important tags on your Web page. And placing your keyword phrase in the title tag, preferably at the beginning, is very important to get that phrase into the search engines. Plus, that puts your keyword phrase as the link in the search engine index.
Get a domain with your keyword phrase (HIGH PRIORITY)
Putting your keyword phrase in your domain name is a great way to optimize for that phrase.
Use the keyword phrase in your URL (HIGH PRIORITY)
Even if you can’t get your keywords into your domain name, you can put them into your URLs. Search engines read the URLs and assign value to the text they find there.
Use your keyword phrase a lot, but not too much (HIGH PRIORITY)
The ratio of your keywords to the rest of the text on your page is called the keyword density. It’s important to repeat your keywords in your document, but not too much. Keyword density should be between 3 and 7% for your primary keyword phrase and 1-2% for any secondary keywords or keyword phrases.
Never link invisible images (avoid this or get banned)
Invisible images are images that are 1×1 pixels in size and cannot be seen by the naked eye on a Web page. Since links are given some priority in ranking a Web page, linking images that cannot be seen by your customers appears to be aimed only at search engine spiders.
Don’t Link Single Pixel Images – Your Site Will Be Banned
This is similar to hiding text or displaying different content to search engines than to your customers. And don’t assume that search engines can’t read CSS or HTML tags that resize full-sized images. If you do this to optimize your pages, your site will be banned.
Never include invisible text on your pages (avoid this or get banned)
Hiding text by making it the same color as the background color may fool your customers, but it won’t fool search engines. Another variation of this is where you make the font size so small that it’s unreadable by the naked eye.
Don’t Hide Text – Your Site Will Be Banned
Search engines understand CSS and font and background colors. They also recognize that a font-size of 1px is not going to be readable. Text that is hidden from your readers but visible to search engines is considered spam and will get your site banned.
Never create doorway pages (avoid this or get banned)
Doorway pages are very simple HTML pages that are written to optimize heavily on one or two keywords or keyword phrases. And they are programmed so that search engines spiders see them, but regular readers are taken to the real site.
Don’t Use Doorway Pages – Your Site Will Be Banned
Doorway pages are designed to trick search engines into thinking that the site has a specific keyword relevance that it may or may not have and they are pages meant to be seen only by the search engine. So, most search engines will ban sites from their directory when they discover you use them.
Never display different content to a spider than customers (avoid this or get banned)
This is often called cloaking because it is an effort to cloak what your site delivers in something that might be seen as more palatable to search engines. It can be very tempting to use cloaking, but while it might give you better results at first, search engines don’t like it.
Don’t Cloak Websites – Your Site Will Be Banned
Search engines want to provide a resource of information that is real, not something that has been doctored to give artificial results. When they discover that your site is cloaking, it will be removed from the search directory.