10 SEO Tips for Beginners

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SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of preparing your website so that search engines like Google will rank it as highly as possible when users enter keywords and phrases to be searched. Here are 10 SEO tips on how you can easily optimize your site for improved rankings:

1. Use the bold tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty. Do not be afraid to be BOLD!
2. Be sure you have a unique, keyword rich Title Tag on every page of your website. If you MUST have the name of your business in it, put it at the very end. Your company's name will get very few searches, unless you are a huge brand like Apple. If you are a huge brand... hire me.
3. Flash animations look great, but there is no searchable content for search engines to see. Also Flash does not work on all mobile platforms. Plus most users do not have the latest version of Flash and can't see your content anyway.
4. I already mentioned that your title tags for each page should be keyword rich... so should your actual file name for each page. Many search engines, including Google, are now matching page content to the page title and the actual URL. The best way to add keywords to the URL? Yep, file name. For example http://www.jwprinting.com/products/businesscards for a company selling cheap business cards ;) Yes, that is also a shameless plug.
5. The longer your site is active the more reputable search engines assume it is. Also when you buy your domain name make sure you pay for 5 years at a minimum. Most search engines check to see how long your domain agreement is when ranking sites. Only buying one year appears like a lack of faith or seriousness and loses priority over a 5 year plus agreement.
6. If you must use Java script drop down menus, flash menu bars, image maps, or image links, be sure to put basic text links somewhere on the page for the search engine spiders to follow.
7. Updated content can help improve your search engine rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a very regular basis. Search engines see new content as an indicator that the information on your site is current and topical. This can boost your page rank compared with those stagnant sites where content is rarely or never updated.
8. Double check all the links to your home page throughout your site. If index.html appended to your domain name you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html. make them all go to http://www.domain.com
9. Get in the habit of including the words “image” or “picture” in your photo and video ALT Tags, descriptions and captions. Most user searches are for a specific keyword plus one of those words.
10. Having the same or very similar content on more than one page of your site can result in downgrading by search engines. This is especially important if you have multiple blogs integrated into your site that may have overlapping content. Keep each page or each blog entry singularly focused and remove old content before adding new more current coverage of old topics.

Hopefully these 10 tips give you enough material to get started optimizing your site for search engines like Google. Following these 10 tips will help to increase your site's page rank and allow more customers to find your site!