Search Engine Optimization Tips

SEO is an abbreviation for "Search Engine Optimization." I don't claim myself to be an expert in this field, but I am trying to give you some tips that can help you rank better in Google!

This page was uploaded on internet on 27th September, 2006 - Google's 8th Birthday

1. Dashes Vs. Underscores in URLs
For URLs, I would recommend using dashes. Lots of computer programming languages have stuff like _MAXINT, which may be different than MAXINT. So if you have a url like word1_word2, Google will only return that page if the user searches for word1_word2 (which almost never happens). If you have a url like word1-word2, that page can be returned for the searches word1, word2, and even "word1 word2".

Google does not algorithmically penalize for dashes in the url despite the fact that some have raised it as a possible heuristic for spam detection.

2. SEO Mistakes: Sneaky JavaScript
Google takes action on individual instances of spam when they find it, but they focus on creating better algorithmic solutions. The high-risk techniques that I would recommend avoiding:

3. SEO Mistakes : Nearly Hidden Text
If you're going to hide text, doing "#EEEEEE" instead of solid white isn't really an improvement. In fact, it can look worse, as if you're trying to choose a text color that won't be exactly the same as the background color, but still won't be noticed.

4. Subscription Based content
Googlebot can only crawl the free portions that non-subscribed users can access since it does not log in. Therefore, be sure to excerpt material in the free version that that offers value

5. What's an Update
Google updates their index data — including backlinks and PageRank all the time. However, they export and publish new backlinks and PageRank data approximately every three months.

Google also crawls and updates its index every day, so different or more index data usually isn't an update either. The term "everflux" is often used to describe the constant state of low-level changes as we crawl the web and rankings consequently change to a minor degree. That's normal, and that's not an update

6. Flash
If you must use Flash, you must also make an HTML version available as well. Block the Flash version from the crawlers with a robots.txt file.

7. User-Friendly URLs
Use user-friendly URLs like "african-elephants.html," and not "343432ffsdfsdfdfasffgddddd.html." Don't overdo it either — african-elephants-and-their-habitats-etc-etc-etc-etc.html.

8. Assign unique, descriptive <title> tag and headings to every page.

9. Minimize the number of redirects upon hitting a URL.

10. Minimize the number of URL parameters — 1-2 parameters if possible

11. Don't use a parameter named "id=" in a URL for anything other than a session ID. Otherwise, it may not be included in the index

12. Earned-links are earned and given by choice. Google does consider buying text links for PageRank purposes to be outside our quality guidelines.

13. Google's is against selling/buying links, and they are good at spotting them — both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.

14. External (domainA -> domainB) 302 redirects are largely treated as 301s now

15. Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages — www.example.com vs. example.com vs. www.example.com/index.html. Since all these urls are different, a web server could return completely different content for all the urls above. When Google "canonicalizes" a url, it tries to pick the best one and elimintes the others. To help Google, link to resources on a site consistently, and use 301 redirects to enforce it. 2006.

16. Do not use the URL removal tool to remove domain.com if you are worried about URL canonicalization and have both domain.com and www.domain.com in the Google index. This will remove the entire site.

17. Search engines can perform canonicalization for things like keeping or removing trailing slashes, upper vs. lower case, or removing session IDs from bulletin board or other software.

18. Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

19. Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages

20. Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The search engines doesn't recognize text contained in images.

21. Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."

22. Have other relevant sites link to yours.

Precautions while dealing with SEOs(Search Engine Optimizers):

• Be wary of SEO firms that send you email out of the blue.
• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Search Engine
• Be careful if a company is secretive or won't clearly explain what they intend to do.
• You should never have to link to an SEO.
• Some SEOs may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar.
• Choose wisely.
• Be sure to understand where the money goes.
• Talk to many SEOs, and ask other SEOs if they'd recommend the firm you're considering.
• Make sure you're protected legally.

Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles listed above will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.