Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips for Beginners
 

By:  Jon Payne
President & Owner
Ephricon Web Marketing
http://www.ephricon.com
May 18, 2004

Search Engine Optimization Tips and General Information for Beginners.

This article is intended for individuals who currently manage and/or maintain their own website and are on a very fixed budget. 

SEO is a highly specialized field and techniques should be customized to each site by an experienced professional.

Tips for Optimizing Web Pages for Search Engines

  • Optimize <title> tags with keywords.  Keep less than 12 words long.  Have unique titles for each page.
     

  • Make sure the text for internal links is related to the title of the page it links to (i.e. link text = target page's primary key term).
     

  • Use <h1> appropriately.  Utilize CSS for this to achieve desired appearance on your website.
     

  • Keep html code as clean as possible.  Make sure you get your keyword-rich copy up in the html as far as possible.  A way to do this is to avoid tables that are excessively code-heavy and put any large javascript in a separate file.
     

  • Put a few keyword phrases in bold where appropriate to catch the user's attention or for emphasis.  Don't overdue this.
     

  • Use alt tags but definitely do not overdue.  Use only on larger images (i.e. not every tiny image that is part of the design).
     

  • Make sure your navigation structure is clear and simple.  Have text-based links on each page.
     

  • Use a site map and link to it on each page.  Make sure the site map links to all pages.  You may wish to create or include this in an existing include page.
     

  • Avoid:  frames, excessive flash or flash-based design, any errors in code, "spammy" techniques such as invisible text or anything that seems like a nice "trick" to get better optimization.
     

  • Use meta tags - Description should have 15-25 words and use less than 20 keyword phrases in the keyword META tags.  Do not repeat the same word more than 3 times in keyword phrases.  The description tag is important as its typically the description used on many search engines (not Google though).  Don't try and SEO this as much as just writing a great description to encourage the reader to click on your link in the search engines.
     

  • CSS will help reduce code, so opt for simple CSS rather than the <font> tag around many pieces of text.
     

  • Try and get your content and keywords as close to the top of the <body> tag as possible by eliminating unnecessary HTML code from your web pages.

Copy - Optimizing the Content (Text)

  • Extra importance is placed upon the first 25 words and last paragraph.
     

  • Several paragraphs of text - 200-300 words or higher is desired.  Don't have too much text on one page though.  Some suggest that over about 800 is too high.  Certainly if one were to err though the higher end is more desirable.  Balance featuring your key terms with readability for the user.
     

  • Have good keyword density but not too high.
     

  • Frequently updated content and changing text helps the site get indexed more frequently, which is desirable as your SEO efforts will be reflected more quickly.
     

  • Articles, forums, and news items are great, especially as related to the above.

Link-Building & Search Engine Rankings

For search engines like Google, the number and quality of inbound links pointing to your website appears to be far more important than the on-page optimization (what's above).  Yet, on-page optimization is essential as well.  On-page optimization makes sure your site is read, interpreted, and to some degree assigned relevance to the key terms you are targeting. 

Link popularity is a major determinant of what well-optimized pages are ranked higher than others.  Generally, the more inbound links to your homepage and internal pages the better - although quality is certainly better than quantity.  However, make sure the following apply:

  • Seek out links from sites that have high rankings in the search engines for topics and search terms similar to yours.
     

  • Focus on sites with a google pagerank of 4 or higher, preferably 4 or higher on the page your link will appear.  one link from a pr 7 is better than many from a pr 4.  Downloading the Google Toolbar will make determining PageRank much easier.
     

  • Links that appear in a paragraph are better than isolated or in a list.
     

  • The fewer outbound links on the page your link will be on the better.
     

  • Have the link feature your site's main keywords.
     

  • When linking back, do not have more than 50 links on a page.  Rather, have a links page that categories your outgoing links and breaks them down into smaller groups.
     

  • Submit your site to all large search engines except for google (allow google to find you via a link from another website in google).  Submit to directories (including google directory and open directory project)
     

  • Avoid "link farms" or websites where the sole purpose of the page is to list many links.