The SEO rat race - are you leading or trailing?

As stressed over and over again, over a variety of webspaces, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the prerequisite for any website that wants to make the most of Internet searches.

So what makes one website a prime candidate for search engine glory, while another is headed for search engine oblivion? Lets find out.

Content Content Content:

• Content is one of the most important factors that decide how highly Search Engines regard your website. The content needs to be fresh and unique. This ensures that viewers return and this repeat traffic ensures that your standing with the SEs moves up.

• Ensure that your selected keywords are present in the body of the page. However, beware, DO NOT GO OPTIMIZATION CRAZY and overload your content with keywords, or you will soon find your self in the search engine graveyard.

• Ensure that the content is enough. Search engines love content rich pages and most SEO experts agree that pages should have at least 350 words.

Links: I am sure everyone knows about the importance of backlinks, but do we know the dangers of link building?

• Don't be too eager: Natural link building is a long term activity, and as such search engines expect links to be built slowly. Most people go on a link building rampage, building too many links too soon. They enjoy the search engine glory for about a month, before they are inevitably and irrevocably relegated into the search engine graveyard.

• Choose your neighbors: You want to live in Beverly Hills, make sure your website does too. Do not link to bad neighbors, because their reputation tends to rub-off on your credibility.

• No Follow and Do Follow: Google has announced that it no longer values No follow links. To get the maximum link juice, ensure that you put up links in sites that do follow.

Technical Aspects:

• Metatags: Most engines disregard metatags completely, so they have no practical purpose. However, I personally tend to continue using them because they define a page and generally its purpose.

• H tags : Ensure that your H tags are optimized for your keywords. This is like the cascading importance of headlines in a newspaper. The bigger the headline, the more important it is. It is the same case for SEO. Use the H tags to stress the most important message of your website.

• Titles: A rookie mistake is to have the same titles for all the pages. Each page serves a different purpose, and as such each title should be different. If you have the same titles for all the pages, then the engines will consider them to be the same page. And will not index them.

If you every find yourself in a conundrum over what to do next, do not hesitate to contact a professional. SEO geeks are a really friendly bunch, and will use any excuse to have some human interaction.

You can contact us, for all your SEO and internet marketing needs through: Internet Marketing at silvertiesdesignstudios.com.