# General Business Category > Business Online Forum >  Tips for SEO

## jdsky

I red this article from other website.Thinking that it may help someone like me who just begin to do some SEO related work I share it here.

 1. Monitor where you stand
      You won't know if your SEO efforts are working unless you monitor your search standings. MarketingVox suggests that you keep an eye on your page rank with tools like Alexa and the Google toolbar.

      It's also important to check your referrer log regularly to track where your visitors are coming from and the search terms they're using to find your site, according to PC World.

   2. Keywords, keywords, keywords!
      You should be conscious of placing appropriate keywords throughout every aspect of your site: your titles, content, URLs, and image names. Think about your keywords as search terms -- how would someone looking for information on this topic search for it?

      The title tag and page header are the two most important spots to put keywords, PC World notes.

      Beware: Putting ridiculous amounts of keywords on your site will get you labeled as a spammer, and search engine spiders are programmed to ignore sites guilty of "keyword-stuffing." Be strategic in your keyword use.

   3. Link back to yourself
      There is probably no more basic strategy for SEO than the integration of internal links into your site -- it is an easy way to boost traffic to individual pages, SEO Consult says.

      You should make it standard to link back to your archives frequently when creating new content. MarketingVox advises that you also make the anchor text search-engine-friendly: "The more relevant words point to a page, the more likely that page is to appear in search results when users run a query with those terms."

      As with all other SEO approaches, be sure your links are appropriate, and be careful not to cross the line into excessive linking -- you don't want your visitors to get annoyed.

   4. Create a sitemap
      Adding a site map -- a page listing and linking to all the other major pages on your site -- makes it easier for spiders to search your site.

      "The fewer clicks necessary to get to a page on your website, the better," advises MarketingVox.

   5. Search-friendly URLs
      Make your URLs more search-engine-friendly by naming them with clear keywords.

      SEO Consult explains: "For instance, it's easy to understand what puppyfun.co.uk/puppyhealth/vitamins would contain. It's less easy to understand if the in-house classification system of the business is used, for example puppyfun.co.uk/11789/s201.htm. A dynamic URL is similarly off-putting, even if it contains recognisable words: puppyfun.co.uk/search/?s="health".

   6. Avoid Flash
      Flash might look pretty, but it does nothing for your SEO. According to the Search Engine Journal, "Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem -- you can't link to a single page [...]. Don't use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results."

      "If you absolutely must have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold," the post continues.

   7. Image descriptions
      Spiders can only search text, not text in your images -- which is why you need to make the words associated with your images as descriptive as possible.

      Start with your image names: adding an "ALT" tag allows you to include a keyword-rich description for every image on your site. Perfect Optimization explains an easy way to do this.

      The visible text around your images is valuable for SEO: MarketPosition suggests adding captions to all your pictures and being descriptive with the text in immediate physical proximity to your images.

   8. Content
      Your content needs to be fresh -- updating regularly and often is crucial for increasing traffic.

      "The best sites for users, and consequently for search engines, are full of oft-updated, useful information about a given service, product, topic or discipline," MarketingVox explains.

      One way to ensure that your site gets new content on a frequent basis is to integrate a blog. "Get the owner or CEO blogging. It's priceless!" the Search Engine Journal suggests. An executive blog is an excellent way to reach out to your clients, create more opportunities for internal and external linking, while giving your site a more personal voice.

   9. Social media distribution
      A CEO blog is just one element of social media distribution, an important SEO strategy according to SEO Consult. You should be distributing links to fresh content on your site across appropriate social networking platforms.

      Whether displayed on your company's account, or recommended, re-tweeted, and re-distributed by someone else, this strategy exponentially muliplies the number of places where visitors will view your links.

  10. Link to others
      An easy way to direct more traffic to your site is by developing relationships with other sites.

      PC World suggests that you personally ask the webmasters of well-respected sites if they'll include a link to your site on theirs. Be sure to return the favor -- then everyone wins!

      Make certain that your partner has a good web-reputation, of course. MarketingVox warns against getting tied to a "link farm" whose bad SEO habits could bring you down.

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derekjay (29-Nov-10), garthu (12-Jan-11), robinsonwang (22-Nov-10)

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## OnlineMarketing

> PC World suggests that you personally ask the webmasters of well-respected sites if they'll include a link to your site on theirs. Be sure to return the favor -- then everyone wins!


mmmmm if i had read that post 4 years ago i would have considered it outdated. Have you tried asking webmasters of well respected sites for a link and as for giving them a link back that is a bigtime no no. It's known as reciprocal linking and was stamped out a long time ago by Google, at best they would ignore it though if you had a lot of reciprocal links you would be penalised in Google's index. There is an art to link building but asking webmasters it aint. Guest blog posting,creating good quality content for syndication, article marketing, blog commenting as well as many other avenues will provide a really high ROI for most industries if you do it well.

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Dave A (05-Jan-11), derekjay (06-Jan-11)

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## Cathy Duncan

These tips are really great and helpful but i am looking for some techniques to optimize keywords within 24 hours. I know that the keywords will be of low search volumes but what else i can do to optimize those keywords within 24 hours and bring them in google search results

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## Dave A

One word -

Adwords.

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## bjsteyn

> These tips are really great and helpful but i am looking for some techniques to optimize keywords within 24 hours. I know that the keywords will be of low search volumes but what else i can do to optimize those keywords within 24 hours and bring them in google search results


The Title and Link are two of the most important aspects of SEO. Working your keywords into them are important. For instance a webiste about cooking, doing an article about cooking fish. The following link www.mycookingtips.co.za/cooking-fish will rate higher for the keywords "cooking fish" than www.mycookingtips.co.za/5-ways-to-cook-fish. The same goes for the title. It should contain as little as possible non keywords. This is just what I have picked up from my own experience, not that I am an expert.

Once you have a few articles ranking high on google, it gets easier to have your articles rank quickly.




> 3. Link back to yourself
>       There is probably no more basic strategy for SEO than the integration of internal links into your site -- it is an easy way to boost traffic to individual pages, SEO Consult says.
> 
>       You should make it standard to link back to your archives frequently when creating new content. MarketingVox advises that you also make the anchor text search-engine-friendly: "The more relevant words point to a page, the more likely that page is to appear in search results when users run a query with those terms."
> 
>       As with all other SEO approaches, be sure your links are appropriate, and be careful not to cross the line into excessive linking -- you don't want your visitors to get annoyed.


As quoted above, linking back to your articles is also a great SEO stategy for two reasons - It increases your SE ranking and it stands out in search engines. Eg. I created 4 posts on Survey Basket linking to each other. When you type in the keywords "surveybasket scam" , all 4 articles appear on google in 1st or 2nd place. It is much more visible to the searcher and the chances of them clicking on it is greater.

Hope my 2cents helps.

BJ

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## byron_spy

The Title and Link are two of the most important aspects of SEO. Working your keywords into them are important

According to my knowledge Google does not use meta titles at all any more for ranking as well as description and keywords

What is your thoughts on the above ?

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## derekjay

> The Title and Link are two of the most important aspects of SEO. Working your keywords into them are important
> 
> According to my knowledge Google does not use meta titles at all any more for ranking as well as description and keywords
> 
> What is your thoughts on the above ?


Meta titles are still a _consideration_, but they're not going to win the war on their own, that's for sure.

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## bjsteyn

> The Title and Link are two of the most important aspects of SEO. Working your keywords into them are important
> 
> According to my knowledge Google does not use meta titles at all any more for ranking as well as description and keywords
> 
> What is your thoughts on the above ?


Hi Byron, I am unsure about the effect of the meta title. It may or may not have an effect, but it won't be huge. I have just picked up from my blog posts that when I use unnecessary words in my post title and permalink it ranks lower on google. It may be true or not, but this is just what i noticed. I have been using this strategy for my blog posts and most of my posts normally rates in googles top 10 even thow my blog is only a few months old.

I have also picked up using post tags with the correct keywords, when i have to use a bit more words in my title. The tags will rate higher than the post itself.

For example: Scam or No Scam? Geostring.com will rate higher on the "geostring.com scam" keywords than for instance Scam or No Scam? Geostring and Clixsense.com, and using a tag "geostring scam" might even rate higher.

I can't see the description not having an effect, as this is telling the search engine what your page is all about. At the end of the day the SE wants to give the searcher what he wants, which is content. The Title ( Not Meta Title ) , The Link and The Content must be on the top of the list actual algorithm which google uses and then the social bookmarking back links. Because if people are bookmarking your content, that meens they like it and google will like it aswell.

Anybody else with ideas and knowledge on optimizing the content & html for SE optimization?

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## FrancoisR

I have a question. I read on Alexa today that on the 21st of October 2010 Google changed the way it searches for content. Some website owners lots about 70% of their daily traffic. If it does turn out to be true, how do we approach SEO as it would not work as it always does. SEO is costly if you get a professional SEO firm and now all the hard work has gone in most respects to a lot of website owners.

http://blog.alexa.com/2010/10/has-tr...ped-youre.html

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## Dave A

Not even a blip in the regular Google organic search traffic pattern for TFSA over that period.

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## OnlineMarketing

> not even a blip in the regular Google organic search traffic pattern for TFSA over that period.


There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2010 algo changes had an impact at the fringes particularly long tail traffic but the heart of SEO, it's traffic and the make up of the traffic has remained very stable.




> The Title and Link are two of the most important aspects of SEO. Working your keywords into them are important
> 
> According to my knowledge Google does not use meta titles at all any more for ranking as well as description and keywords
> 
> What is your thoughts on the above ?


Meta title tags and Descriptions should be used as a point of differentiation in the SERP's(Search Engine Results Pages). Use them to make an impact, eg instead of saying Carpenter Cape Town say "Cape Town's best Carpenter - Guaranteed Quality"
then in the meta description write a classified ad using 160 characters. In general Google display around 160 characters so you may as well use up the space they give you. This Meta description displays in the SERP's under the title. Both Meta Titles and Descriptions DO count towards the algo calculation but their weight has been reduced. In the above example the phrase Carpenter Cape Town is still within the proposed Meta Title though not in the same order, this is fine for SEO purposes AND helps you attract more clicks by selling to your customer instead of informing.

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## Dave A

> There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2010 algo changes had an impact at the fringes particularly long tail traffic but the heart of SEO, it's traffic and the make up of the traffic has remained very stable.


Well that would make it "business as usual" then, surely?

What Francois linked to effectively claims a significant event, which is something rather different.

BTW - at 23000+ keywords over two months, I think we can safely assume a fair amount of long-tail in there  :Wink:

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## OnlineMarketing

Spot on Dave, yes i was agreeing with you. I am sure you get plenty of long tail traffic and as the forum has a history the long tail mix may have changed but areas where you have lost have probably been replaced by areas where you have gained. In general though strong SEO should be increasing traffic, if you are getting traffic from 23000 keywords, the scope is almost certainly in the top 100, if you are ranking say in position 8 for one of those and you move to number 1, you could expect a 1000-1500% increase in traffic from that one phrase. I am sure you know that and if you are getting traffic from so many phrases i am sure you know your onions.

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## bennies

> These tips are really great and helpful but i am looking for some techniques to optimize keywords within 24 hours. I know that the keywords will be of low search volumes but what else i can do to optimize those keywords within 24 hours and bring them in google search results


Facebook has an awesome application called Networkedblogs - syndicate your blog with it and see magic happening - remember your keywords need to be linked to your site!!

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## Thembadl

Great tips.
I understand they take time to produce results but in my case there must be something I am not doing right. I managed to monitor Alexa and drove it to less than 200 000 then I thought that will result into traffic but it is still far less than my expectations. Search engine traffic averages 200/day and I seriously need expect SEO service. My site is www.phuzemthonjeni.com

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## Dave A

> I understand they take time to produce results but in my case there must be something I am not doing right.


That has to be the most ad intensive "content" website I've visited ever. How many ad programs have you got running there? I spotted Adsense, Adbrite, LinkAds (or something along those lines), a pop up which my browser blocked, a pop under which my browser didn't block for some reason, + some affiiate ads...

on one page!!!

I struggled to find the content. I did find some message spam - same profile posting the same message over and over. 

Now seriously, why would you recommend a person go to that website?

And that's the way you have to think about search engines. If a human wouldn't recommend the site... well, the major search engines are trying their best to evaluate sites and pages to recommend in much the same way.

You need to ask yourself - why have I got this website? If it's to generate maximum ad and affiliate income, the content needs to be quality, tight, in line with the domain name if possible and the ads need to be relevant. And forget building a community based social media website - it doesn't produce a high eCPM. Rather write a page a day or a page a week on something targetted, useful and has a healthy search volume. You'll make more money.

If you're genuinely trying to build a community based website, lose at least 75% of the ads.

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## Thembadl

Thank you Dave for your comments. Yes that is all true such that I don't even know where pop-ups are coming from. I understand you clearly, I guess that is as far as I can go because in both approaches you have suggested content will have to be adjusted. I would like to follow community based approach.

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## bellevue limo

Backlinks, backlinks, backlinks! lol. These are a +1 vote to your site/URL for every link you have which means Google thinks your link is worth more.

Of course you want fresh, newly updated content. Google loves new content and even has a specific search for it. Add content as often as possible!

Submit your content to bookmarking sites but you probably already know this since you are a seasoned Webmaster/SEOer.

Deep Linking is critical. Most webmasters don't get this but naturally a website gets deep links to the URLs of content, not to the homepage. You need to make linkbacks to the content in your site.

SEO Friendly URLs are critical to high ranking.

You need the keywords/phrases in your title in order to rank high. Make sure they are part of your title!

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## Thembadl

Thank you Limo, I try backlinks as much as possible. With links, would you recommend buying links?
Title and keywords, I am sure you don't mean loading tittle with keywords? Would you regard this as sufficient:  "Free Career and Entrepreneurial Opportunities"?

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## Nienke

Being new in the online business and therefore new in SEO, Im extremely confused on what the best way is to deal with this. 

There are so many tips and tricks out there, but also the same amount of information claiming that all this doesnt work. We can see that in this thread already!

What it looks like to me is that youll only be able optimize your SEO when you make it your fulltime job. If you, like me, actually want to run a company as well, this is not really an option.

So Im thinking about outsourcing my SEO. Are there any tips and advice about this? Is this a good idea and if so, how to deal with this? And if not, why not?
I dont want to go out there unprepared, there are a lot of false promises, I want a bit more then that!

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## Dave A

Nienke, even if you don't go for "optimum" and just try to *improve* your SEO, you'll already be way ahead of most websites out there which don't even give SEO a second thought.

And as much as the OP was gently criticised as being outdated, the basics remain the basics and they still work.

You need good content.
You need to be aware of the keywords and phrases you are targetting.
You need to put those key words and phrases in the right places (domain name and page title are HUGEly important for this).
You need a short, attractive page description in your description META.
You need to get some exposure where there's already some traffic.

I'm not going to knock the rest because it all adds up, but I really think those are the most important basics without getting too tied up in subtleties.

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## Nienke

Hi Dave,

I guess you're right. Let's first focus on improving, or, in my case, starting. I've only went live with my side this week, and let's take 1 step at the time. First starting, then improving, and then looking at optimizing.

At times I get lost in all the possibilities, and it’s good to stay grounded and focused on the core business, before looking at the rest.

Thanks Dave, I think I needed some perspective there!

Nienke

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## nikol

This is really nice sharing from you.. its have great information about SEO and very useful to everyone. I really enjoy it. Thanks you for sharing such useful link.

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## sanimoyo

Adding to the 24 hour ranking question, to the guys who said the link and the title, add the url, from my experience the meta tags still count, they are also important when it comes to Social Bookmarking, Bookmarking sites get the description from meta tags

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Dave A (30-Nov-11)

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## jsjullia

Link building is the most important par of the SEO. It helps to us increase the visitors and the traffic. The important parts of the links building are the
1- Article submission.
2- Directory submission.
3- Press release submission.
4- Social bookmarking.

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## nico42

Thanks for theses advices !

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## harounkola

This is a bit dated, from Feb last year, but I just came across some really good advice for building free links quick, http://kaiserthesage.com/free-links

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