Making your site Search Engine Friendly (SEO Friendly)
* Using text, not graphics - search engine do not index graphic well.
* Avoiding frame - search engine do not index or handle well
* Using long link text - using keyword in the link.
* Don't keep restructuring - Any one who have bookmark your page now has a broken bookmark. Bad for position in search engine because they wont be able to reach your site through broken link. Link from other websites get broken.
Keyword Add-on
* Singulars and plurals - search engine treat singulars and plurals differently. Try search 'job' and 'jobs' in Google. Check which term is searched for most often.
* Hyphens - search engine treat as different. Generally, search engine treat a hyphen as a space. So, use Email or e-mail / ecommerce or e-commerce.
* Case sensitive - Most search engine are not case sensitive.
* Combination - Good idea to target terms lower down on list, because the lower terms include the higher terms.
o Higher terms : 'E-commerce' (1828 search)
o Lower terms : 'E-commerce software solution' (32 search)
Picking a Domain
* Search engine read URL. For example: www.it-job.com (treat as 2 words) better than www.itjob.com / www.it_job.com.
* For Google, to match only url, use "allinurl:<your keyword>"
* Why use dash + keyword on URL? Easy to get available URL; Advantage for SEO;
* Domain name should short, easy to spell and easy to remember. Most case, you should get .com version - people remember .com not .org / .bz / .net
Checking Prominence
* A word at the beginning of a title tag is more prominent than one at the end.
* A word at the beginning of the description meta tag is more prominent than one at the end.
* A word near the top of the page is more prominent than one near bottom.
Example page title: 'Ads in Malaysia, Singapre... @ OhIget.com' is better than 'OhIget.com - Ads in Malaysia, Singapre...'.
Watching Density
* When user searches for a keyword phrase, search engine looks at all the pages that contain the phrase and checks the density.
* What is density? The ration of the search phrase to the total number of words in the page.
* Example: Your page total 400 words, "classified ads" appearing 10 times (20 words). So, it is 5 percent of 400. The keyword density is 5 percent.
* Important: Do not overdo it. Search engine will ignore if found 50% word density. (Some resource state that 10% word density and over)
Placing Keywords Throughout Your Site
* One site has dozens of pages containing search term will be more relevant than the site only have one page containing search term.
* So, you not likely to grab a top position simply by creating a single page optimized for the keyword phrase. You need dozens, perhaps hundreds.
File and Directory Naming
* Search engines get clues about the nature of a site from its domain, directory and file name.
* So, make your file name meaningful like 'submit-url.gif' instead of 'su.gif'.
* Important: Do not overdo to have too much dashes in file name.
* Keep your pages as close to the root domain as possible. (Means 2 or 3 level instead of 5 to 10 level). Example: First page (http://www.domain.com/dir/page.html) will be weighted more highly than the second page (http://www.domain.com/dir/dir2/dir3/page.html).
Title Tags
* One of the most important components.
* Put keywords in title.
* Title like 'Welcome to OhIget.com' is not beneficial for SEO.
* Place it under <head> tag.
* Use 40-60 characters including spaces (not too long).
* Put keyword in beginning of title. Limit the common words (as, a, the) - search engine will ignore it.
* Maximum repeat keyword once.
Description Meta Tags
* Commonly describes the web pages in search results page.
* Why important? Because it is search result description, so relevance description lets searchers have the desire to enter your page.
* Create a description using keyword up to 250 characters (optimize) including space.
Keywords Meta Tags
* Originally created as an indexing tool.
* Limit tag to 10 to 12 words.
* Make sure the keyword also in the body text.
* Do not repetition.
* Do not use same keyword tag for all pages.
Language Meta Tags
* If your site is language-specific, don't leave this tag empty.
* Search engines have more sophisticated / smart ways of determining the language of a page than relying on the <language> meta tag but they still consider it.
Image and Flash
* As you know, search engine do not index image, video, flash, etc. (Some search engine may index flash but not well.)
* So, for image, remember to put ALT to describe the image. Keyword is preferred.
Body Text - Content
* General, 100-250 words is good. But do not hang up with the number. Any number of words is fine. If your page is huge, then try consider to separate it to multiple page, it good for SEO.
* Keyword content. It is better if keyword has 'web design', this phrase also appeared in web page with no other words between them.
* Do not display content through JavaScript. Spider might not follow it.
* View content separation (based on IP, browser type, etc.) is bad for SEO because when you have one URL and differing content, search engines get confused what the actual content of the page is.
CSS vs. <h>Tags
* Some HTML tags are useful to SEO. One of these are : <h1>, ...<h6>.
* When you put keywords in <H> tags, search engine will pay attention to them.
* Most time, designer not using <h> tags because <h> tags cause space issue. So use CSS to format it.
* Example: Use '<h1 style="font-size:16px;">This is my header</h1>' is better than '<div style="font-size:16px;">This is my header</div>.
Formatting Text
* You may make your keyword in body text different with others word in the page. Example:
o Make it bold using <b></b>.
o Make it italic using <i></i>.
o Uppercase first letter in each words and lowercase other letters in the words.
o Put the word in bullet list. <li></li>.
o Alternative, using larger text in beginning of paragraph.
Creating Link
* It help search bots find other pages in your site.
* The keywords in the links tell search engines about the pages that the links are pointing at.
* Keywords in links also tell the search engines about the page containing the links.
* When you creating pages, create links on the page to other pages, and make sure that other pages within your site link back to the page your are creating, using the keywords that you have place in your title. (Tips: Navigation Link).
* Do not use 'For SEO Consultant, click here'. But, use 'Visit SEO Consultant for more information'.
* Do describe the page being linked by 'title' attributes.
Using Other Company and Product Names
* Yes. You may use on title / keywords. But be careful.
* Many large companies aware of this practice, and a number of lawsuits have been filed that relate to the use of keywords by companies other than the trademark owners.
* If you use product and company names to mislead / misrepresent, you could be in trouble.
* But, if you use the terms in a valid like you create a product page in which you compare your products to another(other company). That's legal.
Navigation Structure
* Navigation structure needs to be visible to the search engines.
* Search engine would not work on purely JavaScript navigation bar. To be cool, try using CSS + HTML + JavaScript, just make sure your <a> tags is inside the body.
* Remember: DO NOT generate link using JavaScript.
Frames
* As you know, a framed site is one in which the browser window is broken into 2 or more parts, each of which holds a web pages.
* Search engine get trouble getting through the frameset page to the actual web page.
* Search engine will index individual pages, not framesets.
JavaScript and CSS
* Shall put JavaScript / CSS as an external file. Not inside pages.
Fix Dynamic Web Page Problem
* Auto generate static file base on categories in database.
* Modify URLs so they do not look like pointing to dynamic pages. Example, remove '?,#,!,%,&' in URLs
* Use a URL rewrite trick. Example: mod_rewrite (apache)
* Extras: If search engine recognizes a URL as including a session ID, it probably wont read the reference page.
Page Forwarding
* Search engine do not want to index a page that automatically forward to another pages. It may be '<meta http-equiv="refresh" content=0;url=http://domain.com">'
Tips
* Adwords and adsense not help on SEO.
* Links from similar site is very useful.
* Do not trust SEO company for guarantee ranking.
Highlight
* Do not overdo for SEO.
* Content must relevance.