Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - DO's and DON'Ts
- Wednesday, June 06, 2007
SEO has changed over the years as search engine algorithms have become more sophisticated. To make sure you stay on top of your SEO strategy, below are the DOs and DON'Ts for SEO.
We use SEO to get more traffic to the Website free of cost and also to gain popularity and business on Internet. But forget that SEO takes a lot of time and efforts to get top rankings on search engines.
Always remember, "A hit to your website can lead to a sale". Knowing what to do and what not to do for your website while following the Best Practices of SEO, will help you in sales and creating a brand in the market.
SEO Do's and Don'ts
- Quality content makes the difference. Create unique and useful content for your website using relevant keywords and keyword phrases.
- Keep website and sitemap up-to-date, Update your website regularly and add new content as often as possible.
- Use your major keywords inside H1, H2, and H3 Tags, Title Tag, Anchor Tags and META Tags.
- Use your keywords in ALT tag for the images as the crawlers/robots/spiders cannot read images.
- Get more backlinks from relevant and reputable websites in your niche.
- If you have very long content in a page, break it into multiple pages. By doing this you can use more of your keyword(s) and keyword phrase(s) in different pages and you will also avoid spam.
- Link Exchange: While exchanging links with other websites be sure they are relevant to your site/category/domain/content etc.
- Avoid redirection of pages, dynamic content, Frames and iFrames as the crawlers, robots and spiders follow HREF instead of SRC.
- Don't spam the crawlers/robots/spiders by having hidden text/content e.g. hiding the keywords within the page with font color matching the background in the page.
- Submit your website to all search engines and directories just once. Repeated submission can get your site banned from the search engines.
- SEO is an ongoing process and takes time to get listed in search engines, so be calm and patient till you get any ranking.
- Don't try to fool the crawlers/robots/spiders as you can get blacklisted and the ranking you will get is only temporary and not permanent.
- Don't repeat the same keyword/keywords over and over; irrelevant and excessive keywords and META tags will backfire.
It feels great to be on the top but it is difficult to stay there because you have to be up-to-date and ready for any kind of change. Doing all this can be very painful, but it does work out in the end. When you see your website getting top ranking in the search engine, its worth the effort and time.
As Google performs more algorithm updates to keep up with user behavior, we'll start to see major shifts in how we do SEO.
Joydeep Deb is a Senior Digital Marketer and Project Manager with 15+ years of experience in Digital Marketing, Lead Generation, Online Brand Management, Marketing Campaigns, Project Management, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), PPC, eMail Marketing, Web Analytics, Web Technologies, Web Design and Development.
With an MBA in Marketing. IIM Calcutta Alumini. Lives in Bangalore, Karnataka - India.