Simple SEO Tips

Some may say - there is nothing simple about search engine optimisation. However, whether SEO is easy or not really depends on the particular website. In most cases SEO is not difficult as long as sufficient time and effort is invested into the project.
1. Create webpage titles related to targeted keywords.
2. Make your meta description unique for each webpage.
3. Use most important keywords in webpage name or URL.
4. Use cascading style sheets (CSS) rather then tables.
5. Add H1 tags preferably towards the top of each webpage.
6. Implement breadcrumbs functionality on your website.
7. Analyze your targeted keywords using Google suggest.
8. Implement the sitemap as text links.
9. Put CSS and JavaScript into external file.
10. Describe your images with the use of the alt tags.
11. Make sure your site logo alt tag contains your keywords.
12. Avoid automatic directory submission.
13. Find quality links to your website. Not easy.
14. Don't use same anchor text in all your inbound links.
15. Use deep linking to many webpages on your website.

Search Engine Bias

The question of search engine bias can be easily verified by examining search results for popular words and phrases. I have performed search for very competitive and frequently searched word finance on Google and Yahoo.
As I expected Google lists as number one:
Google Finance
Google Finance offers a broad range of information about stocks, mutual funds, public and private companies. In addition, Google Finance offers interactive ... finance.google.com
And Yahoo shows in top position... no surpise here:
Yahoo! Finance
Free sharemarket information, financial news, glossaries and guides to help you learn about Australian and international markets.
au.finance.yahoo.com
See if you can find other examples of search engine bias.

Two Words Phrases

One of the leading web ranking provider RankStat.com reported that most people use two word phrases in search engines. There is also a tendency developing that single word phrases searches are in decline and multi word phrase searches are becoming most common. Of all search engines world wide, 28.38 percent use 2 word phrases, 27.15 percent use 3 word phrases and 16.42 percent 4 word phrases.
The 10 most used word phrases in search engines on the web are:
1. Two word phrases 28.38 percent
2. Three word phrases 27.15 percent
3. Four word phrases 16.42 percent
4. One word phrase 13.48 percent
5. Five word phrases 8.03 percent
6. Six word phrases 3.67 percent
7. Seven word phrases 1.63 percent
8. Eight word phrases 0.73 percent
9. Nine word phrases 0.34 percent
10. Ten word phrases 0.16 percent

Harmful Web Content

In order to combat browser malware installations and make Internet safer, Google is displaying a brief message in the search results next to offending website as follows: This site may harm your computer. You may succeed to get your website to top 10 results but if you get this kind of message next to it, you would want to quickly redesign the website in order to avoid further negative publicity. However not everyone is getting the message. This morning when I run a search for "seo consulting" the current # 4 result showed as follows:
SEO Consultant - Shimon Sandler Blog SEO Consultant ...
This site may harm your computer.
The SEO Consultant must start with understanding the clients’ business and marketing goals to develop the strategy and approach for a winning SEO campaign. ...
www.shimonsandler.com/?p=200 - Similar pages
The question is that - if Google is a search engine, should it have a role to pass judgement on the websites?

Politics and Search Engines

Looking at important title tags of two major political parities in Australia it seems that Labour Party has updated their meta tags recently trying to present a subtle political message for anyone using search engines. Liberal Party has done nothing so far and we are presented with very boring and unappealing message. Liberals are not getting good advice on optimising their website for search engines, but at the same time they prefer to spend hundreds of millions of dollars mostly for TV ads. According to Labour Party website, by election day later this year, John Howard will spent at least $850 million on taxpayer funded government advertising.
The Liberal Party of Australia
Official site of the Liberal Party of Australia. Features news, events, current topics, contact information and links ... www.liberal.org.au
Australian Labor Party
HOWARD'S ADVERTISING BLITZ. John Howard is wasting taxpayers' money at record speed. By election day later this year, he will have spent at least $850 ... www.alp.org.au

Thoughtful Comments

Thoughtful comments on a subject of the post may benefit your blog in more ways than one. If your comment is well-written the blog owner will follow it keenly. Adding questions in comments may enhance the post and start a longer discussion which will lead to clarification of the main subject. Your comments will also add quality back links to your blog which in turn will make your blog more visible on search engines. By adding comments bloggers feel encouraged to continue with their writing. On the other hand authors of nuisance comments know what they are doing. And their strategy never goes a long way, since they will be ignored at best or simply deleted and forgotten.

Myths about SEO

In the recent interview Laura Lippay, SEO Program Manager for Yahoo has been expressing concern about lack of education in the area of search engine optimization techniques. Quite often SEO propaganda headlines does not match with good skills and improved search engine results. Those are her words: "There always seems to be a lot of stuff going around that just does not have real proof to back it up. I do not really believe any of it until I can test it for myself. A lot of site owners, seem to think that all they need to do for SEO is slap a couple of keywords in a browser title and an H1 tag on their page and they will see results. The lack of education of SEOs and non - SEOs alike is disheartening sometimes. We still have a lot of work to do on the education front."