The 7 Points of Do-It-Yourself SEO
The basics of search engine optimisation in applied web marketing are simple. It is all to do with the keyword content of your text copy, and can be summarised in seven points.
1. Register a good domain name which reflects what your website is about.
2. Name your page URLs based on reasons like the above for your web promotion, except now you can be more specific. Search engines like to know what your page is all about.
3. The text in the title tag is crucial in letting search engines know what each page is about. Put your important keywords in your title tags, using both the singular and plural versions (people will search for both) and make these tags different and specific for each page. For example, "Widgets and After Sales Widget Services". Whatever you do, do not call the home page"Index", but treat it almost as a mini-description.
4. The other tags (at the peak of the html page) between the two"HEAD" tags aren't as important as the title tag, but the description tag is still used by some search engines in displaying what you would like web users to see when they scroll down a page of search results. Some search engines do not use the description tag at all; others, like Google, sometimes use part of it together with a portion of the main body text surrounding prominent keywords on your webpage. So you might as well treat the description tag seriously; make it brief (about 25 to 30 words) and as comprehensive as possible in the brief space allowed. Ensure you have your popular keywords included within your description tag. The ALT tag is used for a very brief description of an image or graphic file, and is what is displayed if you allow your mouse pointer to hover above a graphic. Nowadays it's not considered important for search engines. The COMMENT tag is never displayed on the body page, and is used by coders and designers as an instruction or reminder to themselves about what that section of html coding should be doing; in the past, some webmasters in their quest for website promotion and search engine ranking used to stuff keywords in the comments tags, but now it's usually acknowledged that the main search engines pay little if any attention to these.
5. Keyword density. Each search engine has its own preference as to how many times a keyword phrase appears on the page to be able to signify the relevance of that keyword phrase (in other words, so as to help the search engine understand what the page is about). Around 5 to 8 per cent is a rough guide as to the optimal amount. Do not overdo it, otherwise it'll be considered spam or keyword-stuffing. Also use your keywords in the headings tags H1 and H2. There is an H3 tag as well, but it is doubtful whether search engines bother with that, because it is perceived as less prominent on the page, therefore less relevant to what the page is all about.
6. Do not forget good linking in your website marketing. Search engines will judge the importance of your web pages to some extent upon the quantity and quality of incoming links from other websites. Ask other webmasters with sites on similar themes to yours for a link, in exchange for a link back. These sites shouldn't be in competition with yours, but should be similarly themed. You may sometimes be asked by other webmasters if they could link to your website. If that is so then take a look at their website; make sure their website is relevant, it has at least some Page Rank, and that it just"feels" good, and has no nasty surprises like redirects or unexpected popups. You don't need to be associated with a"bad neighborhood"!
7. Make sure that important keywords are included in the anchor text within inbound links from other websites. This is important to search engines when they try to determine the significance and importance of your pages.