40 tips that can help optimise your SEO . . .

Below are tips to optimise your SEO for your website. The list is not comprehensive and open to debate. Any additional tips you have, feel free to leave a comment as your input is vaulued.

1) Blog comment on dofollow enabled blogs relevant to your niche. Plus a few nofollow comments to get an even spread, to make your comment behaviour appear more natural.

2) If you use WordPress, put at least 2 tags on every post as Google sees them as keywords and it will get a little bit more traffic.

3) Put H1 text in all articles posted, this is the most important piece of text Google looks at.

4) Make sure you use keywords, one in the first H1 paragraph, again in the main body and lastly in the end paragraph.

5) Keep your URL (website name) as short as possible

6) The page title for your site should be 10 -70 characters long (70 to be optimal) including spaces. This title should be concise and containing your very best keywords.

7) Make sure your meta description for your site is of optimal length (70 – 160 words in length), again, containing your best keywords. 160 is optimal.

8) Make sure all your images have ALT text and get an image map for your website. There are image map plugins available in WP. This should obviously be combined with a site map.

9) Be aware of your text to HTML ratio. The more text there is compared to HTML the better.

10) Frames: Don’t use them! Don’t use Flash either. Both are not recognised by Google for page ranking or indexing.

11) Make sure your website has a robots.txt file to stop search engines accessing pages you don’t want accessed.

12) Make sure the Doctype is specified so that browsers will correctly render your content.

13) Consider using ‘Microformats’ to enable search engines to be more efficient on your site.

14) Look up ‘Dublin Core’ on the Internet and see how this can benefit your site.

15) Look up Geo Meta Tags on the Internet and consider using them.

16) This is an obvious one, but make sure you have a feed to your website, a newsletter and open up your site to comments, even if comments have nofollow enabled.

17) Create a ‘Favicon’ as it looks professional and users are more likely to click on your favicon in their saved favourites because it stands out.

18) Try and join at least 20 social networks and get at least one link to your site on each, but add valuable content on each (this takes time . . .) The search engines will recognise this and will add more prestige to your site for page rankings.

19) Join in with online forums as people will click on your link if you put up some really good forum content. Make your forum comments extremely interesting or useful.

20) Exit pop-up software is a no-no! Some SEO fanatics argue that it keeps people on your site for longer. Yes, it does, but they won’t come back to an annoying site. Imagine not oiling the hinges on a shop door to keep customers in – would they ever come back . . .no

21) Guest post regularly on good sites with posts relevant to the theme of your website. Open up your Blog to guest posts and form relationships with good writers.

22) Vary the link text on each URL link in guest posts to your site. See the latest Google algorithm updates to see why.

23) Don’t underestimate images. Images make your website look beautiful and interesting, YouTube videos too. People will revisit a colourful site more than a text/black and white plain site.

24) Seek SEO advice rather than services. If you want to delegate SEO tasks, then seek out an SEO firm and you will already be tuned up on what SEO tactics are good for your website after research and you’ll be able to see exactly what they are doing and see through any hype to recognise good old hard work done by a reputable SEO company.

25) If you are making a new site, plan the site and categories + sketch the layout. Or, delegate the task to a good website designer.

26) Promote your company’s DNA in everything you do, from forum commenting to guest posts. Every time your fingers hit the keys on your keyboard with a link to your website you are promoting the feel of your service/website. Less is sometimes more, make everything you do shout out ‘quality and care’, rather than short forum comments, nondescript comments such as ‘Nice post!’ and mediocre guest posts.

27) Bring yourself into your website. Post up a picture of yourself in the ‘About Us’ page. Actually seeing you will give people more confidence to trust you.

28) Promise 100% and deliver 200%. If you offer a service, do a better job than they ever expected or over deliver with a freebie. Word of mouth and recommendations are worth more than any advertisement for your website.

29) Get an Android app made up for your website. It adds prestige and also drives a little bit more traffic to your website. Forget iOS apps linking to websites, they won’t accept the app in the first place.

30) Don’t listen to people advising you to cram in keywords. 1 or 2 keywords threading throughout your post is enough. 2% is enough to be effective and will not be seen as ‘cramming’ by Google. Better to get a few good articles up with your best keywords than have mechanical looking keyword stuffed ugly articles.

And one extra tip . . .

31) There is no perfect SEO method, algorithms change and certain SEO methods will be easier or harder to follow depending on the niche you are in or how much time you have. Don’t beat yourself up, just do the best you can. Follow the best SEO methods that you can and most importantly ‘have fun’ as this will be reflected in the work you do. The most knowledgable SEO advisors are at . . . you guessed it . . . Google. Read the Google websites guidelines and hold this close to your chest as a kind of webmasters bible. They are in complete control of the algorithms that shape SEO.

32) After recent Google updates, quality posts are now favoured. Therefore, it may be a good idea to scan your content and weed out boring posts, posts with pitiful traffic or thin posts below at least 350 words. You may want to apply ‘nofollow’ to pages such as ‘About Us’ or ‘Privacy Policy’ & shopping cart pages etc.

33) Google loves pics and video and more importantly, so do readers. Some people make the argument that YouTube videos take people off of the page, but in fact, if readers watch the video on your article your bounce rate is enhanced and if they click on ‘View in YouTube’ it opens as a new window in your browser anyhow, with your article still open in the background. So the previous argument is debatable.

34) Infographics are the new ‘in thing’ but never shove up an infographic that is not linked to a quality article. The infographic is just seen as an image and nothing more, so you need a word count with it. For readers, if you have an infographic at the end of a post it increases the time that the viewer stays on your post. It can add value to the post in the reader’s eyes also. There are some pretty awesome infographics out there too.

35) If you are advertising a product, try linking the ads to pages within your website and they will not be viewed as ads by Google, as in being directed to another website. However, if your ads are not excessive you don’t have to worry.

36) Do not put ads ‘above the fold’, as in at the top of your webpage, put them to the side or at the bottom as this will damage your site’s PR value for sure.

37) How can you beat Google’s algorithm changes if you don’t know what they’ll be? You can’t in short, but if you aim at an even spread and don’t do anything excessive apart from putting up excessive original and interesting posts you won’t have to worry. For instance, what if Google punished people for putting up guest posts on high PR sites only? Well, if you’ve done an even spread, such as posting on the odd PR1 site, you don’t have to worry.

38) Never translate articles from another language into English, Copyscape check it and put it up once Copyscape has passed it. Google are cleverer than this and if they aren’t punishing this behaviour now, they will surely pick up on it in the near future. This would mean scouring your site and ripping down pages at a later date, if you can remember which ones were re-spun that is.

39) Apply nofollow to your tags in WP.

40) Apply nofollow to your categories in WP.

Article by Kevin Baker appcomrade.com