Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and web promotions expert advice

Optimizing the HEAD section of your webpage

1. 1. Use a TITLE tag (in the HEAD section of your HTML file) that contains the keywords for your website. The title of the home page should contain your company name. Example:<title>Virtual Soft Technologies-seo, animation, audio video, print, web services</title>
2.  Use META tags for description and keywords. Keep the description short, a maximum of 200 characters (including the spaces). Keyword lists should be a maximum of 1000 characters (including the spaces and commas). In the old days, longer keyword meta lists would get you higher on the search results, but this is going out of favour with the search engines. Do use the meta keywords, though, to list the most important keywords on your page (once is enough) and any synonyms or common misspellings. Always include your company name in your keyword lists.
3. Optimize the META description to include your company name, what you do, and your target keywords. Keep this description to 200 characters.Minimize the depth of your HEAD section by using links to javascript and cascading style sheet code whenever possible. Too much junk in the HEAD section can make a search engine program known as spider think your site’s text starts too far down the page to be relevant.

Flash in your design:

1. Flash elements themselves are not problematic.
2. They only become problematic if they are not used properly (the SEO way).
3. Designing splash pages is one of the biggest SEO mistakes, precisely because splash pages are made up almost entirely of flash.
4. If you need to use flash, insert as much keyword-optimized text as you can and write a title and meta information in the source code.

Image Maps and Java:

1. Use standard HTML hyper links to interlink your website pages. Site maps too should be created in standard HTML.
2. Search engine spiders often get stuck in image map codes.
3. Search engine spiders also cannot follow links in JavaScript.When designing your website, don’t even think about going around search engines by using black hat techniques like cloaking a keyword spammed page with a very nice copy for website visitors to see.
4. Using black hat methods is just good for the short-term, and you can actually get removed from Google’s index of websites if you do.
5. The popularity of the search engines has made website design acontinuously juggling act between keyword density and aesthetics and of ranking well with the search engines whilst holding visitors’ attention.
6. The rule of thumb in designing, however, is to always keep your visitors in mind – the search engines come in only secondary.
7. After all, if it is not SEO, there are other ways to promote your website – like email marketing campaign, viral marketing, and launching a Google Adwords campaign. You can also write blogs and PR articles that have active links to your website.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 3:01 am and is filed under SEO Tips and Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.