50 SEO Tips

I was browsing through some old posts on the webmaster forums I use and come across this one I had left around a year ago. I thought I’d share the post on the blog!

Here are 50 general SEO tips, all of which could make a single blog post!

The Top 3 tips I can give are:

1) Make your site/pages easy for Search Engines to find and process
2) Research keywords that customers will use to find your site, and incorporate them within your site.
3) High Quality In Bound Links. Links from pages with a good page rank value, have relevant content to your site, have your keywords within the link and are on the home page of the site is: The ultimate SEO tool any webmaster can have.

The following tips are just ways to achieve the above 3 goals.

Domain Names
4) Include your primary keyword within the Domain name.
5) Do not separate the keyword and other words within your domain name using a -, for example: cheap-hotels-london.com
6) Old domain names carry more weight than new ones.
7) Try and buy a old domain name if possible. Search for your keyword and “Under construction” and email the webmaster, you may be able to buy the domain name if the owner has no plans. Circumstances change. Never change your domain name if your site is listed within the search engines
9) Use a .co.uk domain name if your business is targeted for the UK market, otherwise use .com

Sites Pages
10) Use quality content, the better the content, the better the site is for your visitors and the Search Engines.
11) Always use HTML if possible (including xhtml/css)
12) Keep your URL’s simple: Search Engines do not like long domain names that include characters such as: ?=soeker&new?
13) Store Session ID’s in cookies rather than URL’s
14) Use a flat directory structure - Max ¾ sub folders
15) Use a Site Map
16) If your site has more than 100 pages, use separate site maps
17) Use a robot.txt file
18) Avoid using Frames at all cost
19) Keep Flash to a minimum
20) Avoid Java script if possible

Keywords
21) There are many tools for finding relevant keywords, but only one is the industry leader - http://www.wordtracker.com/
22) Be specific with your keywords
23) Put your shelf in your customers shoes when researching keywords
24) Look at the keywords from your web site stats
25) Check the keywords your competition are using
26) Cover all keyword variations
27) Look into miss-spellings
28) Consider merged and hyphenated keywords
29) Be descriptive with your keywords

Keyword placement
30) Title Tags
31) Header Tags
32) Body Text
33) Link Anchor text
34) Meta Tags
35) Only use a small number of keywords per page
36) ALT Tags

Link building
37) Make sure your keywords are in the anchor text of all links
38) Links from pages with High Page rank carry more weight
39) Engage in Reciprocal links, but not too many!
40) Make sure links, either reciprocal or one way, are from pages with similar content as your site
41) To find link building partners, search for your keyword along with +add link, +submit link, +add site, submit URL and so on.
42) Use Direct marketing such as emails to request for a link
43) When writing to other webmasters, include a reason why it will benefit them or there users if they link to you
44) Offer other sites free content, or a review in exchange for a link
45) Submit your site to directories
46) Use article submission to obtain links
47) Avoid Link farms or anything similar

Other Tips
48) Analyse your competition - What are they doing that is making there site rank well?
49) Always put your user first for example: Make sure your site is easy to navigate
50) Use a Blog