Seo Basic Tips Seo Techniques
Without content, a site is worth nothing!
Even with all the search engine optimization techniques which you may find, your site will never be found in the search engines if it does not have real content. It must be original (i.e. not copied from other sites...), well organized. In fact you should comply with some elementary rules.
We try through these pages to give you some councils to be applied to the creation of your Web pages. We approach the following points:
A Typical Template Page
A standard page is rather easy to describe: it is enough to compose it naturally such as you would have done it if you did not know that it should be optimized! That can appear stupid, but the best pages are those containing of the well built sentences, with of course your keywords.
On the other hand avoid the lists of keywords, that does not make very serious for the visitor, and if a crawler (a search engine robot) encounters it, you are likely to be detected and consequently black-listed!
Finally note that the length of the page is significant. In general you should not design too long page: try not to exceed 20 KB (without counting the images). If you have too much text, the weight of the keywords decreases. Thus too long pages are not read by the Net surfers who are always in a hurry...
Choosing The Best Title of Your Pages
Among the particular points of a Web page, if one had to optimize one of them, it would be without question its title. Standard HTML specified a special tag for the title of the page, and the search engines attached a great importance to it.
Your title must absolutely contain your most significant keywords. In general the title of the home page is the same as the name of the site, followed-up possibly of a small slogan. Preferably put the most significant words at the beginning.
It is also of primary importance not to repeat the same title on all your pages. On the one hand because you lose the possibility of varying the keywords, and on the other hand because if several pages of your site get listed in search engine results, the Net surfer is likely not to visit them all, thinking that it is about the same thing.
About the maximum (or optimal) length, one speaks on average about 60 characters, but this number is different according to the search engines.
Using Good META Tags
META tags are special HTML tags, located in the heading of the page (<HEAD>), giving additional information. They are not intended to the visitor but rather for the search engines.
However they are not used by search engines like they used to do... For example Google does not use them any more (only some of them). For the other search engines, you can nevertheless fill in the two following META tags:
* description: this tag is used to give a description of the site (or better, the page). Prefer one or more sentences correctly built with a series of keywords.
* keywords: this tag contains a list of keywords, separate either by commas or by spaces. You can put several forms of the most significant keywords: think in the plural or even of the spelling mistakes.
As you may have understood, the fashion is not more with the stuffing of keywords in META tags, but rather with the true content of the pages.
Optimizing Images
You can be tempted to put many images or large photographs on your site. The principal problem is that your visitors will wait a long time before being able to see the hole page, which is likely to make them leave!
The best council I could give you is to take care not to put a too heavy image to load. I will not give you all the details, have a look at some good sites specialized in graphics. Just remember that there are two types of images, and that each one has a different file format:
* photographs: for this type of image, it is necessary to use the JPEG (jpg extension), without massacring quality with a too high factor of compression.
* logos, texts: this type corresponds to all the images comprising a low number of colors (up to 256). In this case it is necessary to use format GIF (or PNG), but never JPEG.
From the Search Engine Optimization point of view, it is rather simple to optimize the images. You should always put an ALT="description field of the image" (see for example the logo of this site in the top left).
Have Many Quality Links to your Website!
After the content, the second most significant thing for a good ranking is to have many links of quality which lead to your site.
Indeed, the majority of the search engines (Google at the head) use the structure of the Web to order the results of research. To be more precise, a research by keywords on Google passes by the 3 following stages:
1. the Net surfer types his keywords and launches search
2. Google seeks in its index which pages correspond best to these keywords (according to several criteria but which depend only on each page separately)
3. Google orders these results according to their PageRank and displays them.
Why search engines do attach so much importance to the link? Quite simply to illustrate the fact that if a site A establishes a link towards a site B, it is because A "thinks" that B is an interesting site, which deserves to be visited. This link must thus make increase the popularity of the site B.
Moreover, if site A is a site of reference, i.e. a popular site, then a link from A towards B will all the more have importance.
After these first explanations, we propose you to study the following points:
What's a Quality Link?
We explained you that it is of primary importance to have sites which link to your's. If your little brother, who has just published the first pages of his site, put a link towards your site, unfortunately that will not undoubtedly have little influence on the popularity of your site. On the contrary, if Yahoo! decides to put a link towards your site from their homepage, then your site will quickly be propelled at the top of the results!
In fact, a quality link is a link from a page having a strong popularity, i.e. good PageRank in the case of Google.
This said, there are two other significant criteria: the number of links and the context of the linking page. More precisely, the format of the link must comply with some rules to be optimal.
Getting Many Links
Here are several techniques for getting many links:
First, let us repeat once more, have a site with real content, i.e. of value-added. Indeed, how do you want that a webmaster put a link towards a site without interest? On the contrary, if your site is an interesting content for its visitors (not a competition but rather a complementarity), then it will put a link towards your site without even having being asked to!
Second, suggest other webmasters to exchange links. Target sites treating of the same subject as you, if possible reference sites (having good PageRank). It is worth taking enough time to visit a site before sending an email. Then, be convincing, serious and cordial. Personalize to the maximum the email. Take care to explain in which form you propose to make the exchange of links (see our councils on this subject). Keep a trace of the emails which you send and do not harass the webmasters until they answer you!
Third, submit your site to directories. We particularly recommend you Yahoo! and DMOZ. If you have money, submit to Looksmart or other directories. If you don't, you may have time (hopefully!) to submit to a large number of small directories. Lastly, take time to find specialized directories (on your topic or your local area) and to submit your site there. Prepare several descriptions your site (of different lengths), as well as lists of keywords.
The Optimal Link Format
As we explained it in the description of a quality link, the link context is very important. In the case of PageRank for example, a link between two pages will bring more PageRank if both contexts are identical.
In fact, the context may only be based upon
* the title of the page A linking to page B,
* the anchor text (text used to establish the link within the <A> HTML tag).
Then it is better that page A talks about the same subject as page B, and that the anchor text comprises the best selected keywords for page B. The optimal format of a text link of a site A towards a site B must be the following:
<a href="http://www.siteB.com/pageB.htm"> put here the optimal keywords for site B</a>
When you ask to another webmaster to make a links exchange, give him (her) a code like this one, stuffed with all your keywords (in general the text should be the title of your site).
Do not forget that to optimize the contribution of a link in terms of PageRank, the page which will contain the link to your page must have a good PageRank (let's say more than 4), and must have the least number of links. Check for example that the links page is not orphan, and that it does not contain a META tag prohibiting the crawlers from indexing it...
If you prefer making a banners exchange, the image must contain an ALT attribute with your keywords:
<a href="http://www.siteB.com/pageB.htm"><img src="thumbnail.png" alt="put here the optimal keywords for site B"></a>
DMOZ Directory (Open Directory)
DMOZ is an international directory managed by thousands of voluntaries, joined together within the Open Directory Project (ODP): it is a free directory.
This directory can be freely re-used by anyone, the most famous of them being Google without any doubt. The Google directory is an adapted version of DMOZ, updated approximately only one time per month, where the sites are ordered according to their PageRank instead of the traditional alphabetical order.
The inscription of your site in DMOZ will have two consequences:
* your site could be found in a research on DMOZ or all the other sites using it, including Google.
* the PageRank of your site should increase, often by one unit (except if you have PageRank of 5 or more).
To be included in DMOZ, browse the categories of the directory, under one sub-category of "World > " according to the language used by your site if it is not english. Once you have found the best category, click on the link "Add URL" in the top right of the page, and follow the instructions.
You must strictly respect the instructions, in particular for the title and description. Otherwise your site is likely not to be approved. Check your spelling, do not put superlatives like "the best site of..." and build a true sentence for the description, which should not be an accumulation of keywords.
You can check on dmoz.org if your site is approved, then on directory.google.com if the directory has been updated. Then finally you may see the category displayed on the Google Toolbar.
The Yahoo! Directory
Yahoo!, creator of the most famous directory of Internet, still remains a must. An inscription in Yahoo! will have two considerable impacts for your site:
* thanks to the great traffic of Yahoo!, you will obtain regular visits.
* Google seems to attach a larger importance to a link from Yahoo! or DMOZ directories. It will thus increase appreciably the PageRank of your site.
Before submitting to Yahoo!, read our advices for submitting to DMOZ, or choose to pay your subscription if you are in a hurry (or fortunate!).
Even with all the search engine optimization techniques which you may find, your site will never be found in the search engines if it does not have real content. It must be original (i.e. not copied from other sites...), well organized. In fact you should comply with some elementary rules.
We try through these pages to give you some councils to be applied to the creation of your Web pages. We approach the following points:
A Typical Template Page
A standard page is rather easy to describe: it is enough to compose it naturally such as you would have done it if you did not know that it should be optimized! That can appear stupid, but the best pages are those containing of the well built sentences, with of course your keywords.
On the other hand avoid the lists of keywords, that does not make very serious for the visitor, and if a crawler (a search engine robot) encounters it, you are likely to be detected and consequently black-listed!
Finally note that the length of the page is significant. In general you should not design too long page: try not to exceed 20 KB (without counting the images). If you have too much text, the weight of the keywords decreases. Thus too long pages are not read by the Net surfers who are always in a hurry...
Choosing The Best Title of Your Pages
Among the particular points of a Web page, if one had to optimize one of them, it would be without question its title. Standard HTML specified a special tag for the title of the page, and the search engines attached a great importance to it.
Your title must absolutely contain your most significant keywords. In general the title of the home page is the same as the name of the site, followed-up possibly of a small slogan. Preferably put the most significant words at the beginning.
It is also of primary importance not to repeat the same title on all your pages. On the one hand because you lose the possibility of varying the keywords, and on the other hand because if several pages of your site get listed in search engine results, the Net surfer is likely not to visit them all, thinking that it is about the same thing.
About the maximum (or optimal) length, one speaks on average about 60 characters, but this number is different according to the search engines.
Using Good META Tags
META tags are special HTML tags, located in the heading of the page (<HEAD>), giving additional information. They are not intended to the visitor but rather for the search engines.
However they are not used by search engines like they used to do... For example Google does not use them any more (only some of them). For the other search engines, you can nevertheless fill in the two following META tags:
* description: this tag is used to give a description of the site (or better, the page). Prefer one or more sentences correctly built with a series of keywords.
* keywords: this tag contains a list of keywords, separate either by commas or by spaces. You can put several forms of the most significant keywords: think in the plural or even of the spelling mistakes.
As you may have understood, the fashion is not more with the stuffing of keywords in META tags, but rather with the true content of the pages.
Optimizing Images
You can be tempted to put many images or large photographs on your site. The principal problem is that your visitors will wait a long time before being able to see the hole page, which is likely to make them leave!
The best council I could give you is to take care not to put a too heavy image to load. I will not give you all the details, have a look at some good sites specialized in graphics. Just remember that there are two types of images, and that each one has a different file format:
* photographs: for this type of image, it is necessary to use the JPEG (jpg extension), without massacring quality with a too high factor of compression.
* logos, texts: this type corresponds to all the images comprising a low number of colors (up to 256). In this case it is necessary to use format GIF (or PNG), but never JPEG.
From the Search Engine Optimization point of view, it is rather simple to optimize the images. You should always put an ALT="description field of the image" (see for example the logo of this site in the top left).
Have Many Quality Links to your Website!
After the content, the second most significant thing for a good ranking is to have many links of quality which lead to your site.
Indeed, the majority of the search engines (Google at the head) use the structure of the Web to order the results of research. To be more precise, a research by keywords on Google passes by the 3 following stages:
1. the Net surfer types his keywords and launches search
2. Google seeks in its index which pages correspond best to these keywords (according to several criteria but which depend only on each page separately)
3. Google orders these results according to their PageRank and displays them.
Why search engines do attach so much importance to the link? Quite simply to illustrate the fact that if a site A establishes a link towards a site B, it is because A "thinks" that B is an interesting site, which deserves to be visited. This link must thus make increase the popularity of the site B.
Moreover, if site A is a site of reference, i.e. a popular site, then a link from A towards B will all the more have importance.
After these first explanations, we propose you to study the following points:
What's a Quality Link?
We explained you that it is of primary importance to have sites which link to your's. If your little brother, who has just published the first pages of his site, put a link towards your site, unfortunately that will not undoubtedly have little influence on the popularity of your site. On the contrary, if Yahoo! decides to put a link towards your site from their homepage, then your site will quickly be propelled at the top of the results!
In fact, a quality link is a link from a page having a strong popularity, i.e. good PageRank in the case of Google.
This said, there are two other significant criteria: the number of links and the context of the linking page. More precisely, the format of the link must comply with some rules to be optimal.
Getting Many Links
Here are several techniques for getting many links:
First, let us repeat once more, have a site with real content, i.e. of value-added. Indeed, how do you want that a webmaster put a link towards a site without interest? On the contrary, if your site is an interesting content for its visitors (not a competition but rather a complementarity), then it will put a link towards your site without even having being asked to!
Second, suggest other webmasters to exchange links. Target sites treating of the same subject as you, if possible reference sites (having good PageRank). It is worth taking enough time to visit a site before sending an email. Then, be convincing, serious and cordial. Personalize to the maximum the email. Take care to explain in which form you propose to make the exchange of links (see our councils on this subject). Keep a trace of the emails which you send and do not harass the webmasters until they answer you!
Third, submit your site to directories. We particularly recommend you Yahoo! and DMOZ. If you have money, submit to Looksmart or other directories. If you don't, you may have time (hopefully!) to submit to a large number of small directories. Lastly, take time to find specialized directories (on your topic or your local area) and to submit your site there. Prepare several descriptions your site (of different lengths), as well as lists of keywords.
The Optimal Link Format
As we explained it in the description of a quality link, the link context is very important. In the case of PageRank for example, a link between two pages will bring more PageRank if both contexts are identical.
In fact, the context may only be based upon
* the title of the page A linking to page B,
* the anchor text (text used to establish the link within the <A> HTML tag).
Then it is better that page A talks about the same subject as page B, and that the anchor text comprises the best selected keywords for page B. The optimal format of a text link of a site A towards a site B must be the following:
<a href="http://www.siteB.com/pageB.htm"> put here the optimal keywords for site B</a>
When you ask to another webmaster to make a links exchange, give him (her) a code like this one, stuffed with all your keywords (in general the text should be the title of your site).
Do not forget that to optimize the contribution of a link in terms of PageRank, the page which will contain the link to your page must have a good PageRank (let's say more than 4), and must have the least number of links. Check for example that the links page is not orphan, and that it does not contain a META tag prohibiting the crawlers from indexing it...
If you prefer making a banners exchange, the image must contain an ALT attribute with your keywords:
<a href="http://www.siteB.com/pageB.htm"><img src="thumbnail.png" alt="put here the optimal keywords for site B"></a>
DMOZ Directory (Open Directory)
DMOZ is an international directory managed by thousands of voluntaries, joined together within the Open Directory Project (ODP): it is a free directory.
This directory can be freely re-used by anyone, the most famous of them being Google without any doubt. The Google directory is an adapted version of DMOZ, updated approximately only one time per month, where the sites are ordered according to their PageRank instead of the traditional alphabetical order.
The inscription of your site in DMOZ will have two consequences:
* your site could be found in a research on DMOZ or all the other sites using it, including Google.
* the PageRank of your site should increase, often by one unit (except if you have PageRank of 5 or more).
To be included in DMOZ, browse the categories of the directory, under one sub-category of "World > " according to the language used by your site if it is not english. Once you have found the best category, click on the link "Add URL" in the top right of the page, and follow the instructions.
You must strictly respect the instructions, in particular for the title and description. Otherwise your site is likely not to be approved. Check your spelling, do not put superlatives like "the best site of..." and build a true sentence for the description, which should not be an accumulation of keywords.
You can check on dmoz.org if your site is approved, then on directory.google.com if the directory has been updated. Then finally you may see the category displayed on the Google Toolbar.
The Yahoo! Directory
Yahoo!, creator of the most famous directory of Internet, still remains a must. An inscription in Yahoo! will have two considerable impacts for your site:
* thanks to the great traffic of Yahoo!, you will obtain regular visits.
* Google seems to attach a larger importance to a link from Yahoo! or DMOZ directories. It will thus increase appreciably the PageRank of your site.
Before submitting to Yahoo!, read our advices for submitting to DMOZ, or choose to pay your subscription if you are in a hurry (or fortunate!).