SEO cheat sheet from Alex Nadtoka

31 Март 2011 9 Comments

by seoadminin SEO Articles in English Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,




What is SEO ?

SEO is the process of optimizing your website for Search Engines (like Google) so that it ranks well on search engine results pages.

When someone types a keyword word or phrase into search engines to find website like yours, for sure you want to appear on the first or second page of the search results. And that is why I prepared a small list of SEO tips which will make your site much more friendlier to the most popular search engines in the Internet.

1.) Keywords research:

For search engines keywords are the most important thing in your website, so please do not ignore it. Try to find out the keywords which people use to seek websites similar to yours, the sites from your niche. I suggest you to use free Google Keyword Tool. Then just focus on natural inclusion of your targeted keywords, set them in where possible but without doing it excessively.

Additionally, find long tail keywords(at least three words) because such keywords could be the secret to great search engine rankings. Usually long tail keywords related to your niche meet much less competition.

Note: Check Google Keyword Tool

2.) Use Relevant URLs:

First of all you should choose a domain name that is short, memorable and includes the most important key phrases. Hyphens are acceptable, but I do no suggest to use more than two hyphens. After that check if the domain name is available using whois service. Once domain name will be yours please take a look for individual pages of your website. Include relevant keywords in your pages URLs, so that each URL looks like www.your-main-key-phrase.com/main-keyword/targeted-page-keyword.html.

Note 1: When possible, avoid the use of session IDs and other dynamic variables which add a lot of unnecessary junk to your page`s URL.
Note 2: If your website is on Apache web server you may try .htaccess “Friendly URLs” rules to rewrite your URLs. However, in this case please be careful and use/link to/promote the friendly one url only, because search engines could count two different URLs as duplicated pages and decrease their(and whole website) ranking.

3.) URL Canonization:

The same page may be counted by search engines in different ways, as http://www.yourname.com,  http://yourdomain.com and http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html . In this case each of the URLs will be having unique Page Rank. This can impact your tracking stats and throw away the website in search results. To avoid this decide the URL you want to use and make all needed changes from the web hoster side.

It is suggested to:
- check your internal links to make sure that they are consistent (www or non-www);
- build only consistent external links;
- create a Sitemap with consistent links;
- define “Host:” directive in robots.txt (although Google ignores this directive, the others engines still follow it);
- use 301 redirect (for example to redirect website`s non-www variant to www one)

Note 1: I am using “www” varian and advice you to do the same.
Note 2: 301 redirect can be done with the help of your hosting control panel, Apache .htaccess rules or most of the available web programming languages ( PHP,Perl,HTML,ASP.NET etc).

4.) Optimize your Title and META Tags:

META tags are so called “meta elements” which used to provide structured data about a Web page to web servers, search services and other programs.

The most important SEO meta tags are:
- META Keywords tag. It is no longer used by Google for ranking, although other search engines may still use it. Point there 8-10 relevant keyword phrases comma separated.
- Title tag. This tag provides you an excellent opportunity to raise your website ranking.  Titile tag should be no more then 60-70 characters length. Also make sure each of your web site pages has its own unique title which contains relevant page keywords. Try to be more figurative and exciting when creating your titles.
- META Description tag. Keep description tag around 160 characters length and make it unique for each of your pages.

Note: Title and description is what the seeker will see in search engines` result page, so try to make it sound insuperable and give the seeker a reason to visit your site.

5.) Optimize your Images:

Firstly, make sure to include ALT tag for your images set code. That tag describes what the image is. Oh, and do not forget to use targeted keywords in image description.
Image filenames should contain targeted keywords too (not just 123.jpg).
Also keep your image size reasonable, large images could slow your page loading and this will hurt your page ranking.
Limit number of images per page. It is not a good idea to put lots of images on each page.
Surround  the image with relevant text.

Note: Optimizing your images you will not only improve simple web search ranking but also propose image search ability in services like Google Images Search. Image optimizing is good, but don`t over do it (don`t put a bunch of keywords in your images, don`t rename all your file names with the same keyword/key phrase, etc).

6.) Internal Link Building:

“Anchor” – word or group of words (phrase), to which is attached a hypertext link.

This is one of the main factors which helps your pages to gain a higher ranking in the search engines. Decide some main targeted keywords/phrases for each of your pages and make sure
to include them in anchor links pointing to the pages. Always try to bind your website`s relevant topics and pages with the anchors.

Note 1: For example, you have software review/catalog website. Make sure that wherever there is a keyword on your site, it is linked to a specific software profile page. This will increase SEO Page Rank for individual profile pages.
Note 2: Important! When Googlebot indexes a page containing JavaScript, it will index that page but it cannot follow or index any links hidden in the JavaScript itself. Use of JavaScript is an entirely legitimate web practice. However, use of JavaScript with the intent to deceive search engines is not.
Note 3: Mostly, Search Engines like those links which are placed in the middle part of the web page.  They are more valuable then those which are placed somewhere in the header or footer of the page.
Note 4: Don`t over do your link building. Pages with the tens of links could be count as spam and simply ignored by the search engines.

7.) External Link Building:

Good idea will be to start link building from high value and relevant to your niche sites ( popular blogs, forums, review sites, catalogs, social bookmark sites… etc).
There are lots of high quality, respected website directories like DMOZ, Yahoo directory,  Best of the Web and others. Submiting your site to the following directory can bring huge benefits for you. Submitting your site to such directories make sure to choose right category because relevant sites` niche for sure will grow your reputation.

Do not ignore social networks,bookmarks and services like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Squidoo, Tumblr, Wikipedia, Slashdot, etc.  and search the ways to promote (not SPAMming) your website there.

Note 1: DMOZ (also called “Open Directory Project” ) has been the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web since 1998.  It is easy to “suggest URL” add request, but it is hard to actually add the website. The catalog is constructed and maintained by a global community of volunteer editors and that is why it is very  important for popular search engine like Google. By the way Google`s website directory is just DMOZ mirror.
Note 2: When it comes to back linking I do not suggest the following:
- buying links;
- participating in the link farms;
- spamming blogs and forums with the senseless comments, linking to your site;
- adding your site to low quality, spammy directories.
Above I have mentioned the strategies which, per my opinion, are doomed from the beginning. Also remember that when you build thousands of links in a few days, search engines will count this as unnatural and you may get a penalty.


8.) Google and Wodpress:

WordPress is an open source blog publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL which can also be used for content management. It has many features including a plugin architecture and a templating system.  WordPress is the most popular blog software in use today.

Google loves WordPress. Why? Well, Matt Cutts, one of the main engineers at Google said “WordPress takes care of 80-90% of SEO mechanics”. So I would suggest you look for ways to use WordPress in your business.
Here are few interesting SEO plugins for WordPress:

All in One SEO Pack – an excelent plugin which could adjust your Title, Meta tags, internal/external incoming/outgoing links, etc
Google Analyticator – Adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google’s Analytics.
Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.
RC Link Redirector – a very useful plugin which transforms your external links into internal.
WP-Cumulus – Flash based Tag Cloud for WordPress. Increasing your internal linking mass/power.
WP Super Cache – Very fast caching plugin for WordPress. It reduces website loading time and as a result strengthens the site’s position in search rankings.

So here is my “SEO Cheat Sheet”. Hope it will be useful for you.

Good luck!





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9 Comments (+add yours?)

  1. snk
    Апр 17, 2010 @ 21:52:49

    Thank you for sharing this! I never even knew about Google Sniper. And I’m trying to find out how to get my 3 sites I have to page 1 on Google. I do the traditional stuff like back-linking, but who has time to do that all the time? So yeah again thanks for sharing!

  2. seoadmin
    Апр 22, 2010 @ 21:33:19

    @snk
    No problems. Hope it will help you.

  3. Sysadmin4ik
    Май 04, 2010 @ 21:54:30

    Копирайтер из Вас не вышел бы, но философ ушь точно получился

  4. Katerinka
    Май 07, 2010 @ 18:21:11

    Ponravilos

  5. Pylesos
    Май 07, 2010 @ 18:56:59

    как же все-таки не хватает врмени даже на то чтобы прочитать что-то интересное((

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