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Summer Of Search – Part 2: 5 Quick Tips To Help Your SEO

August 17, 2008 By

In part 1, I posted about the main difference between white hat SEO and black hat SEO. I also mentioned that simple white hat SEO tactics are capable of producing profound results. Here in part 2, I’d like to elaborate on that by providing some simple (white hat) pointers to help you improve your search rankings. These pointers that are related to the various elements of a webpage are:

  • Title: This is the text that you see in the top bar of your browser and represents the title of the particular webpage you’re visiting. I tend to cringe whenever I see “Untitled Document” or “New Page” as the title because this is a missed opportunity. The title is the #1 ranking factor for Google and should contain at least your company/website name and keywords related to the page.
  • Headings: Your content should be clear and easy to read and using headings is an easy way to separate the content. But headings also contribute to SEO, especially the H1 heading. If that contains relevant keywords, it will help improve your search rankings.
  • URL: The webpage’s address (URL) is also a critical factor for SEO. I often see pages that have the URL www.yourwebsite.com/page1.html and this is a missed opportunity as well. By including relevant keywords in your URL is another step you can take to optimize your website for search engines.
  • Meta Tags: There are two types of meta tags, meta description and meta keywords. The former is more important than the latter because the description is what appears under the page title in search results. Therefore, it is more important to have relevant keywords in the meta description than it is to include these keywords in the meta keywords.
  • Relevance: I used the word “relevant” in relation to keywords because the relation between the keywords and the actual content is also an important search ranking factor. Using the keywords “Britney Spears” while your website is about refrigerators will NOT help your search rankings!

Look at your website critically and see where you can apply these quick wins to boost your search rankings.

Filed Under: Fundamentals Tagged With: , , , , ,

Summer Of Search – Part 1: Introduction To SEO

July 20, 2008 By

Search is one the primary activities of Internet users. Being found on the Web has become a key driver in both brand awareness and sales. The results of search engine optimization (SEO) are profound and even minor tweaks can catapult your web page to a very good search ranking. Using some minor SEO tricks I’ve managed to boost one website’s Google position from page 6 to position 3 (on page 1). SEO works and the results are noticeable within days (sometimes weeks). There are, however, different ways to perform SEO. The distinction that I would like to point out in this point is that between white hat SEO and black hat SEO.

White hat SEO refers to best practices that rely on quality to improve search rankings. White hat SEO is based on the premise that the quality of the content will naturally lead to high search rankings. It also encourages good design, which includes the clear use of titles, headings and tags. White hat SEO should not require the user to apply more tools/methods than there are available as standard and encourages users to make optimal use of those tools/methods.

Black hat SEO refers to “dirty” practices that often rely on quantity to improve search rankings. Black hat SEO tactics tend to consist of shortcuts that are able to boost a website’s search ranking quickly. A key search ranking factor is, for example, the number of back links, i.e. the number of websites that link back to your website. A typical black hat SEO tactic that makes use of this factor is to back links on “ghost sites” or “link farms”. Using an entire network of these back link-generating websites, the website’s number of back links is artificially inflated.

Black hat SEO tactics are frowned upon by search engines and generally result in major penalties, such as a lowered search ranking or even (temporary) removal from all search results.

Therefore, I discourage you to employ black hat tactics. If you’re working with a SEO consultant, make sure that s/he does not use black hat SEO tactics to boost your search rankings.

In part 2, I’ll be sharing some simple white hat SEO tips that will help you improve your search rankings.

Update: Here is Part 2

Filed Under: Fundamentals Tagged With: , , , ,