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By Jack Humphrey
If you are confused about terms like "search engine
optimization" or having a "search engine friendly" site,
then listen up! I am here to help.
Depending on how long you have had, or considered having, a
website online, you have heard terms thrown around like the
above or even worse, acronyms! SEO comes to mind.
Really there is not that much to fear even if you have no
idea right now what is really meant by having a search
engine friendly site.
Here is what search engines like to have in their results
when people type in keywords:
1. A site with lots of content.
2. A site with UNIQUE content (Original - meaning you
wrote it or you paid someone to write it for you.)
3. Sites that are well organized link-wise (meaning simple
navigation from the main page of your site to every other
page of your site.)
4. Sites that have links pointing to them from other
popular, relevant sites. (sites that are similar in
content to yours but that are not in direct competition
with yours in content)
5. Sites that change regularly (not static but always
growing with new content on a regular basis)
6. Sites they can read. (search engine robots cannot read
javascript for instance and therefore you get no credit for
whatever content is in that application on your site)
7. Tightly themed sites. It is easier for an engine to
rank your site properly (where you want it to be) if you
are not all over the map in content.
Exception: Portal sites or directories. But this is an
item for another article all together
What About The Complicated Stuff?
There really isn't anything complicated about what the
search engines want. But if you have stumbled into a
search engine forum you were likely blown away with
comments and tips that were completely over your head.
There is a difference between basic, standard optimization
and the stuff they talk about in those forums. While
visting SEO forums is good to keep up on new things as you
go along, many people get confused and the forums are the
breeding grounds for confusion when you are a beginner.
Try to learn advanced SEO from noted experts in the field
rather than taking anything in chats or forums as gospel.
A lot more people THINK they know what they are doing than
actually do.
Remember that anything someone is willing to give away for
free which, if it works, could be worth tens of thousands
of dollars in high rankings resulting in high sales, is
probably something that is old hat and not effective
anymore.
But for now, you have a lot of work to do on the basics.
The advanced stuff can come later. Relative to the
advanced SEO, getting the basics right is the most powerful
move you can make because you are going from zero to moving
up in rankings by, many times, tens of thousands of spaces
in a relatively short time.
Advanced SEO focuses on moving your site from high rankings to
slightly higher rankings.
Keywords
Your content is the most important thing about a website.
It must be friendly to the search engines meaning no
special java script or other stuff. Just good old
fashioned HTML. You will do fine with PHP, SHTML, and
other things, but for the purpose of this article, HTML is
the way most people construct their sites.
You should use a good density of your main keyword phrase
for each page of your site within the content. If you are
going after a high ranking for the phrase "dog leashes" you
need to have that phrase in the title of the page and
throughout the content.
Programs that are great for analyzing your site and giving
feedback on how to improve your rankings don't come any
more highly recommended that Internet Business Promoter
from Axandra.
More Info: http://www.Axandra.com/go.to/jdh358
Nice thing about the software above is that it teaches you
search engine optimization while it works on your site. So
having it is like having a course on optimization while
your site is altered for the best placement in the search
engines at the same time.
The main recommendation I have for people starting to deal
with optimizing their sites for the engines is to take
things one at a time and get the basics down before you
start messing with advanced strategies.
And when you start down that road, information you pay for
is usually more accurate and more valuable than hanging
around in forums. High rankings are worth a LOT of money
and people don't work hard to become experts just to give
that information away.
Good luck and get to work!
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