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Search Engine Keys
& SEO Rules
Everyone will they
you that they have the keys to getting you ranked in the top of
the search engines. They are all full of crap. So many people in
fact that an entire SEO (search engine optimization) industry has
popped up online with an insane following.
We have to
equate it to people trying to tell you that you can get gas
for free or sell you gadgets to make your car run on water.
As long as there are believers, there will be an industry.
It is true that some
elements are important to getting your website indexed in the
searches. But they are no secret and freely offered in the search
engines own help sections. They should be the only keys that you
are concerned with. Other tricks and gimmicks will cost you more
than they will ever produce.
Stick with the basics.
It is the basic elements that most websites miss and keep them
out of google and yahoo. Either they completely ignore the basics
or they are just too lazy to make the effort to build a good
website.
Basic
Search Engine Optimization Rules
Rule 1: TEXT
TEXT TEXT. You must have words in your pages. Search engines
cannot read pictures, they can not read banners and they can't
read minds. If you want someone to find your website with the
term "Used Cars" then the actual words "Used Cars"
must be on your page. You cannot tell google that you want to be
listed under "Used Cars", you actually must have those
2 words in your page.
Rule 2:
More Text. If you just use 2 words in the page, the search
engine will not index your page. It just does not have enough
content to have any use to the google users. Your pages should
have generous amount of text in them. If you think 10 words is
generous then you failed this rule already.
Rule 3:
Links. You need to have links on pages to other pages and
other websites. The Internet works based on links. If the search
engine gets to your homepage, it needs to be told that you have
other pages. This is done by having text links on the main page.
Rule 4:
No Advertising! If you have a bunch of banner exchanges
and advertisements on the font page, the search engine will
classify your site as spam. Limit the front page to links to
internal pages and good keyword relevant text. Avoid external
links on the home page as if you send anyone away on page one the
searches see that as a redirect away from your own website.
That means the
companies selling you on the idea of adding their logo to your
homepage are doing you a big disservice while building their own
back links quite successfully.
Rule 5:
Don't spam the search engines. Don't use automated
submitting services or programs. If you submit your site to the
search engine even manually, several times a week, they will just
ignore your website. They all have articles about it in their
help sections. Automated submissions are just a waste of their
resources and it costs them money. If you cost them money they
have no interest in sending you traffic.
Rule 6:
Lots of pages. Make sure you have loads of pages. If you
only have one or two pages the search engine has no reason to
index your website. Your website has little to offer people that
go there. As an example, would you pay $10 for a book that was 2
pages? You could read the book in the store and it would have no
value to take it home. Give the search engine a reason to include
you. Have plenty of pages with unique and on topic content.
Rule 7:
Be patient! it takes time for the search engines to crawl
the entire Internet and that time is getting longer and longer.
In general the indexes are recompiled monthly, so additions can
take several months on average. It would be nice if you could
speed this up. But the logistics of reading and processing
billions of pages just takes time. And even though people whine
about how long it takes them to build their page, they expect
google to build billions overnight or even faster. But computers
just cannot do that.
Follow those
basic rules and your page will be included and you will get your
fair share of search engine traffic.
The real truth about search
engine optimization is that it is more scientific than smoke and
mirrors that the SEO firms through around. They claim to have
special formulas to get your page ranked and often don't even
modify your website.
When you end up ranking low in
the searches, they say "image how much lower you would be if
we did not do the SEO". Then they tell you to get hight, you
need to pay more.
They suck you into a never
ending cycle that never gets you anyplace.
But if you just follow the
simple search engine optimization rules we laid out you can get
higher placement and better traffic without sending any money at
all.
Of course, you can pay people
to do it for you, but make sure they are actually doing it for
you and not using some invisible magic software that makes you
number 1 on google.
Never pay for SEO
You should never pay for SEO
because the SEO expert can actually hurt your website. But
creating meta tags and off topic content they might get you in
the searches but they could also alienate your customer base.
Using meta tag descriptions
can be great or they can be bad.
Since some searches use them
as the descriptor in the results you might actually drive traffic
away with the wrong descriptors even though you rank higher in
the SERPs.
For example, take a dentist
website.
The SEO expert might add a tag
with "cavities filled, teeth extracted, dentures repaired".
In fact this type of a
descriptor my help in the search engines, but which will you
click on when you search for a dentist?
"cavities filled,
teeth extracted, dentures repaired"
Friendly neighborhood
Dentist, Family Friendly
Now although the first might
help with keywords, the second will help with traffic.
Do you advertise on your front
window with:
There is a lot more to SEO and
websites that just getting in the search engines. The way your
website works is key to getting customers and nobody should every
sacrifice the user experience for the sake of SEO.
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