Simple Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques

Traffic is the core factor for any website/ecommerce business. And every webmaster knows that the best type of traffic is natural, organic search engine traffic. Because, it is extremely target oriented, and it is FREE too. And the hard part is getting top ranking for your site.

Purpose

The aim of this article is to provide a few simple, effective, and especially, search engine friendly strategies to boost your websites' ranking and thus your traffic. And they are explained briefly below.

Meta tags

You might have already heard of or may be using Meta tags on your site and you may be using them effectively. Usually we go over only to two tags, i.e. the "title" tag, and the "description" tag and give less importance to the "keywords" tag. The major search engines have placed less and less weight on this one, and some would argue against this tag that it has no weight at all but there is some merit and no drawbacks to using this tag.

It is effective to use similar text in the "title" and "description" tags, and to place your keywords prominently in these tags near the beginning and more than once. There are some sites with the names like, "sitename.com", "New Page 1", or "Welcome to my site" in the "title" tag but it will not score higher rankings for their particular keyword. It is better not to use words such as "and", "or", or "the" in these tags.

Key words

Search engines evaluate keyword prominence, keyword weight, and keyword density in determining a site's ranking. All the three are calculated individually for the page, the title tag, the description tag, as well as other areas on a page. Keyword prominence means how close the keyword is to the beginning of your page. Keyword weight refers to how many times a particular keyword or phrase can be found on the page. Keyword density is the ratio of the keyword to the other words on the page. You do not want the keyword weight or density to be too high, as this can appear to the search engine as "keyword stuffing" and most search engines penalize sites that stuff their keywords.

Navigational links

Keep your navigational links and JavaScript at the right or at the bottom, but not on the left, of the page. When the search engines "read" your site, they read from the top left to the bottom right. Search engines give first preference on the first 100 words or text on the site. You do not want these words to be navigational links or JavaScript. Actually, you want to have your tags with your keywords in the beginning of your page. Placing your links/JavaScript on the right or bottom of your page ensures the search engine spiders get to the text first, giving more weight to your page.

Alt tag

All of your images should be connected with alt tags. Search engine spiders cannot "read" pictures or images. The only way a spider knows what an image is about by reading the alt tag. This is also another chance to place more of your keywords in your HTML, improving your page's keyword weight/density. Alt tags are easy to make and they can make a big difference in your sites keyword ranking. A simple alt tag looks like this: alt="put your keyword phrase here." Search engines separately calculate keyword prominence, density, and weight in alt tags as well, so optimizing your tags also is important.

Keywords on top and bottom

The keywords should be kept at the bottom of your page also. Just as search engines place more weight on the first words of your page, they also do the same to the last words. The general thinking is that, if your site is about a certain subject, and then the main points, or keywords, should appear at the beginning, be spread throughout the page, and be prominent at the conclusion. But if you have all of your navigational links and JavaScript at the bottom, your relevant page text could end well before the HTML does. An easy way to have your keywords at the bottom of your page is to include them in the copyright information. For example, if you have a dog food website, you can add like this at the very bottom of the page:

World's best dog food

Search engines do not penalize the sites using this technique, and it will not make much sense for them in doing so.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the actual linking text on a site. The user clicks on to navigate to that particular site or page with the anchor text. If a search engine finds many links to your site using the term "dog food", then the search engine concludes that your site is about "dog food". This is overlooked quite often, but it seems to have a very large impact on your search engine rankings for a particular keyword. Your anchor text needs to be the keyword or phrase you are trying to target. Try to avoid anchor text such as "Click Here" or "http://www.yoursite.com/".

Links

If you run a reciprocal link campaign make sure to use variations of your text. If an engine notices every link to your site is identical, it could place less weight on these links or potentially penalize your site. This is because search engines generally give more weight to "naturally occurring" links, and less to "reciprocal link exchange campaigns". Using different, but relevant anchor text can dramatically affect your targeted keyword rankings, by making your links appear more natural.

Conclusion

Effective SEO may seem difficult at first, but the little tricks which were mentioned above, require little or no programming knowledge and can make a huge impact on your keyword ranking of your web site.