Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Best Practices (Part 2)
In the previous post, I have already discussed 3 of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Best practices which are the technical and editorial criteria that search engines look for when assessing a website relevancy to users’ search queries. Let us recap the first 3 SEO Best Practices:
SEO Best Practice #1: Unique HTML Title meta tags for each web page.
SEO Best Practice #2: Anchor text within hyperlinks on web page to identify a keyword focus.
SEO Best Practice #3: Include primary keyword with related keywords to establish context in each web page.
Now I going to discuss the next 3 SEO Best practices.
SEO Best Practice #4: Include a text sitemap of all the site pages to reveal link structure.
It is important to ensure that your website and all its pages are accessible to search engines. A sitemap enables search engines to find your web pages and helps determine relevance and organic ranking for your targeted keywords. The sitemap must not be more than 3 level deep and more than 90 links. A level is equivalent to a click from your home page where 3 level is equivalent to 3 clicks. If you have more level and links try to break it up to sub sitemaps and link them from your main sitemap.
SEO Best Practice #5: Must have a valid and unique content preferably keywords-riched content.
Search engines hated duplicate content. If the search engines found that there are duplicate content, only one is ranked in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Moreover, your web pages will not rank well since it is not unique and your site might even banned or penalized by the search engines. In Google, your web pages might even end up in the supplemental index where pages are left to ‘rot’ and ‘die’. The search engine robots look for unique content that is well-written for the human (not machine) with keywords and with good information to support the subject matter. If your content meets the search engines requirement it has potential to rank well.
SEO Best Practice #6: Employs a good linking strategy for your website.
A typical website will contains inbound and outbound links. You should ensure that all the links on each web page are relevant to subject matter of that web page. It is good to have authoritative and trusted sites linking to you. The inbound links to your web site from them validate your expertness. Although outbound links are not as important as inbound links, they strengthen the subject matter your site. You can link to references from well authoritative or expert sites. The point to note is that, it is the quality of links and not the quantity of links that is important.
Now that I have discussed the 6 most important SEO Best Practices, I hope that you have grasped the basic understanding of SEO. In the subsequent posts, I will discuss other aspects of Search Marketing like PPC, Social Media, etc. Please stay tuned to my posts.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Best Practices (Part 1)
“Best Practice asserts that there is a , method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is more effective at delivering a particular outcome” - en.wikipedia.org
What are SEO Best Practices? In SEO, best practices include the technical and editorial criteria that search engines look for when assessing a website relevancy to users’ search queries.
According to SEMPO Institute, there are 6 important, high-level criteria that we must consider to make our
SEO a success. We will go through them in this and subsequent post that follow.
SEO Best Practice #1: Unique HTML Title meta tags should be used for every individual web page.
Most search engines use the words in the HTML Title metatag to provide the title for the link displayed on the search engine results page (SERP). It is also believed that the Title mets tag is also important criteria for determine the relevant of keywords phrase and page ranking in SERP.
Eg. the title tag of my page
<title>JasonChew: Internet Management Consulting, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization SEO, PPC, Web Analytics</title>
If my title tag is keyword riched and have good keyword prominence, density and weight, then it is consider good title. As I written in the previous post, title tag can never be more than 120 characters. Some SEO experts even recommends dividing the title into 2 parts of 66 and 54 each and further optimizing each part. I guess is because Google only display up to 66 characters while Yahoo up to 120 characters.
SEO Best Practice #2: Anchor text within hyperlinks on a web page can identify a keyword focus.
The anchor text used in hyperlinks should contain targeted keywords followed by a brief description of the
subject matter. The anchor text should be keyword-rich text links.
Eg. for this post’s title it is hyperlinked as such:
<a href=”http://jasonchew.net/2009/03/14/search-engine-optimization-seo-best-practices-part-1“>Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Best Practices (Part 1)</a>
It is already keyword-riched and it is followed by the subject matter which is the content of this post.
SEO Best Practice #3: A primary keyword supported by related keywords will establish context in each web page.
A primary keyword should be assigned to each web page with supporting or related keywords to further explain context. This is similar to the anchor text example above.
By doing this, Search engines will understand the meaning and the context of the primary keyword. Furthermore, keywords that are closely related to the text help the search engine know what your site pages are about and deduce the relevancy of our page to users’ searches. This also help to establish a theme for the site.
P.S: To be continue… I will discuss the next 3 best practices in the next post.
