Editor note: This is part 1/2 of a series about do-it-yourself SEO from Scott Fox, author of Internet Riches and the E-Commerce Success Blog. (Part 2: 5 tips on using search keywords and phrases)
Search engine optimization is a requirement for growing your business online just like a Yellow Pages listing was in the 20th century. If you’re not prominently listed in search engine results, your business may as well not exist to millions of potential customers.
Despite lots of hype by SEO consultants, the basics of SEO are actually pretty straightforward. In fact, I recommend against hiring SEO consultants until you have tried this article’s DIY strategies for improving search engine ranking yourself. This will save you money and make you a smarter web marketer.
Here are my Top Eleven Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization Tips.
A. Link Exchange Tips
1. Relevant Link Backs
The most important factor in determining search engine rankings today is the number and quality of other sites that link to your site. Search engines count these links to determine how authoritative your website is, and use the count to assign a ranking relative to other sites in your target market.
To boost your site’s rankings, you need sites that are relevant to your topic area to link back to you. Their relevance to your topic is important because the choice by a related site to link to yours validates your site’s credibility for your target topics.
2. Highly Ranked Link Backs
Because the sites that link to you help determine your site’s ranking, it’s best if you get sites that are not only relevant but also already highly ranked to link. Some of their high ranking with the search engines basically "rubs off" on your website if they link to you.
3. Anchor Text Link Backs
While almost any relevant or authoritative links back to your website are helpful, it will improve your site’s search engine ranking more if the text of those links contains keywords that are important to your site’s products or subject matter.
So, for example, don’t just ask for links using your domain name or "click here" as the "anchor text". Instead you should ask your link exchange partners to link to your site using text like "best deals on plasma TVs", or "Indianapolis chiropractor".
Such keyword-loaded anchor text links are helpful because the search engines essentially give you "double points" by counting both the link itself and that link’s reinforcement of your website’s importance for the keyword topics it contains.
B. SEO Design Tips
4. No Flash Movies
Don’t hide your web pages behind animated movies that play using Flash software. They may be pretty but search engines prefer plain text today and cannot read Flash. So don’t do it because it may prevent search engines from indexing your site at all.
5. Menus in Text
Similarly, don’t hide your navigational menu links in images. Search engines cannot read graphics as well as they can read text. Your navigational menu is critical for search engine spiders to read both because the menu’s entries demonstrate the hierarchy of your website, and because the keywords contained in menu links tell the search engine what you think is important on each page.
6. Keywords in Image "ALT" and "Title" Tags
As stated previously, search engine crawlers cannot read graphics. You can increase the SEO impact of images on your pages by ensuring that you title and tag them appropriately.
This means renaming JPEG’s and other non-text files with new names that include keywords. So, a photo of a cat should be renamed from "c4289b.jpg" to "cat.jpg" if you want any search engine ranking benefit related to "cat" keywords.
The ALT tags and TITLE tags associated with each image are also great places to insert keywords that can be even more specific than the file name example.
