I wanted to put together a list of do’s and don’ts for you to read and, while I was writing my list, I came across a similar article from a chap called Kuldeep Singh that I have encoporated into Bath Marketing Consultancy’s list.
1. Original content – Search engines love websites with original (and relevant) content, which will also naturally draw incoming links and visitors as well. “Original” content can be anything from product reviews to your own articles and/or news and Blogs.
2. Add more content regularly – How often a website is updated can have a big impact on your search engine ranking. Most search engines prefer fresh content.
3. Research your keywords – You need to research which keywords you want to target before you even start making your website. These are the keywords that you will be targeting in backlinks when possible and your main page will revolve around these keywords. You can conduct your research using Google and the other search engines and then write your website content accordingly.
4. Create a sitemap – Sitemaps are a definitely plus (and can be created for free) as they help search engines walk your website as you have mapped everything out. It can also greatly help visitors find what they are looking for on your website. Be sure to link to your sitemap from your main page.
5. Use HTML – While this may sound obvious, there are sites out there created entirely in flash or javascript which is a definite no no for SEO. While some search engines can read part of javascript, by not using regular html link between pages, your site may not even get seen by search engines.
6. W3C compliant – Making your web pages complies with the World Wide Web Consortium’s standards is always a good idea. It is impossible to know exactly how the search engine spiders read a web page, so it is impossible to know how it will handle non-standard code. You can bet, though, that it has been tested to handle html code that follows the standard.
7. Webpage title tag – Be sure to put your target keywords in your title tag – the writing at the very top of your page.
8. Build backlinks at a normal pace – NEVER use one of those link farm programs where every member automatically shows links to all the other members. Search engines will see you one day literally showing thousands of backlinks instantly and this could get you penalized or banned which has actually happened to a client of mine before he came to Bath Marketing Consultancy.
If you are a regular reader of The Marketing Expert you will know that I have written many articles on SEO and how to get the best from your website, but, I think it is worth pointing out that I practice what i preach.
