Search Engine Optimization

When doing search engine optimization (SEO), there are many aspects to consider. A good keyword selection process is important, choosing a good domain name for your site, link building, writing press releases and articles that promote your website, etc.

Another aspect that is important is page optimization. You need to make sure that your web site's pages are "bot friendly". Meaning that your pages should organize and display the information in a manner that the bots used by the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.) will recognized your targeted keywords and give more weight to your site based on them.

Here are 15 tips to optimize your pages.

1. Make sure each page have a title tag. Your targeted keywords should be as much as possible at the beginning of the tag. You can leave your web site's name in the title, but it is recommended that you leave it at the end.
2. Have a meta keywords and descriptions. Although, not as important has other aspects, the description text is often used in the search engine results pages to describe your site. It should be well written and also not too long.
3. Meta keywords should contain your primary keywords as well as common typos and grammatical errors.
4. Use only one H1 tag by page with keywords similar to the title tag.
5. Use sub-titles (H2 and/or H3) before each paragraph or logical section of your page. This helps readability and helps define your content for search engines.
6. Use bullet and numbered lists and bold text to clean up the page's content and make it easier to read.
7. Use text links as much as possible. Image and Flash links should be avoided when possible.
8. Include a site map with links to each of your web site's pages.
9. Make sure each page is unique. Don't duplicate your content!
10. Write content for your visitors, not for the bots! If not, your site might become difficult to read and it could get penalized.
11. Images are never read by the bots. Avoid using images for text and titles. The same goes for Flash.
12. When using images, always add an alt tag to describe the image. The alt tag should contain keywords related to the image and the page.
13. Your page's content should always contain some of your keywords. Always make sure the content of your pages remain relevant.
14. Your home page should have links to the most important pages of your site. These links should also contain your keywords.
15. Your site should be easy to navigate for visitors and for bots. Place links at the bottom of each of the

I been doing SEO for a very long time now so I thought of helping webmasters with a very common issue. The problem is that most webmasters see their site jumping in and out of the indexed. Today you check and your website is in the index. Next day you wake up in the morning and guess what, your website is no longer there. So why does this happen?

You are not giving spiders what they want.

A similar thing happens when sometimes you are ranked on page three for a keyword, then you go back to page nine, then again to page three and so forth. Your rankings sort of play around, you never know where your website really ranks.

In both cases above one very common thing is happening which I refer to as spibalance.

Just like a balance calculates which side has the largest weight so do spiders. The balance in our case has your website on one side and what spiders require in order to index your website on the other side. When you give them enough of what they need the side with your website on goes down. In other words you get indexed.

If you do not give spiders what they want, the balance will remain neutral and you do not get indexed. So what is that they want to index your website?

It is backlinks.

Now at first you start getting backlinks bit by bit, so the balance starts moving from side to side, sometimes you hit the target and you get indexed. But then again you get de indexed until you have completely out weighed the spiders requirements to index you. Think of the requirements as lots of backlinks located on the other side of the balance.

This same thing does apply to your rankings as well.

But instead of just backlinks, there are other factors that you need to give spiders in order to get the rankings and keep your position. Then improving as well your rankings. In this case the requirements to improve your rankings may increase as well, depends on what your competitors are doing. If you are going to outrank them, you need to get more links then they are getting. Aim to do better then what they are doing because on the balance spiders requirements most often are exactly what the websites that are in the number one position have.

This means the number of links, the quality, the anchor text they use and so forth.

To get indexed for example you do not need to worry about what anchor text to use.

However understand the concept, give the spiders what they want and remember when this happens it is because you are on a spibalance. You learn how many backlinks is enough by experience. Usually doing article submission to a hundred websites is enough. Directory submission less powerful so you may want to do more submissions than just a hundred, probably a thousand.

Article submission can be done using software. This should be done on regular basis, because it is not just good to get indexed but also to improve your rankings.

This is easy, the bottom line is the more backlinks you get the better. Then it depends on you and the amount of work you can do.