General Ideas for improving SEO Performance

Here are some general ideas for creating Web sites that perform well in the search engines.

1. Choose a good domain name, ideally with keywords embedded in it. Own it for years, too, so that you do not appear to be fly-by-night. Buy the domain name for more than one year, and do not let the expiration date get close before you renew (within a year) the domain name.
2. Use some form of Web analytics on your site. This allows you to see where your visitors come from, as well as what they do while they are on your site. I have written a page about this subject.
3. Have a sitemap for Google, especially if your pages are dynamically generated. These can be XML (preferred) or plain text. There are many tools for this, including free Web-based services that create XML sitemaps from your site.
4. Use HTML in a way that provides clear structure for search engines and for handicapped viewers. Provide title and meta tags (especially description and keywords tags), and make sure they are unique to each page. Headings (h1–h6), strong, and em tags are all elements that are given greater importance by the search engines. From a user standpoint, they help to create a visual hierarchy and focus attention on the more important pieces of a work. Generally, the h1 element should only be used once per page, the h2 element should be used three times or less, and h3–h6 should comprise the subheadings, pull quotes and other featured content areas. Strong and em elements are a little different since they are meant to display inline with other text and should be used on a discretionary basis. Provide alt attribute for images; this provides text to screen readers, as well as the search engines. Image search is becoming increasingly popular, so proper use of alt can bring traffic to your site from images.google.com and other search engines. Example: Search for "site:monolithdesign.com monolith" on Google Image Search.
5. Move your navigation code downward in the HTML. Pretend that a search engine spider “loses interest” if your page is too long.
   If all of your navigation and header code is at the top of your HTML file, the spider may lose interest before it gets to the actual content. By using CSS positioning, you can place your navigation code below the main content in the BODY section.
6. Keep your site dynamic. Keep adding content, and updating old pages on your site.
7. Check your site for errors, and fix them. Google likes error-free sites – it shows you care. Validate your HTML and CSS to ensure your pages are clean. Broken links may also creep in, so use a tool like Xenu to automate link-checking of your site.
8. Make sure the major search engines know about your site. Submit it to Google, Yahoo, MSN, and DMOZ. Use the Webmaster tools at Google and Yahoo to register a sitemap for your Web site.
9. Get well-ranked pages to link to your site. Provide suggested link anchor text that they can use to link back to you: the richer in keywords, the better. Search engines weigh link text more heavily than they do for regular paragraph text, so it makes sense to use descriptive text here. Any time “click here” is used for anchor text is a wasted opportunity.
10. Write the content for people, not search engines. The search engines use very sophisticated methods of semantic analysis, and they can usually detect when you over-use keywords on your pages. Write for your intended audience, and the search engines will follow. Figure out the most effective keywords for your domain, though, and keep them in mind when you are writing content.
11. Create Accessible Sites for Users with limitations: create content that is accessible to people with physical limitations. Many people use screen readers that omit images; will your site fall apart without images? Annotate images and links with title attributes to provide feedback to the user, as well as provide descriptions for the search engines (who only understand text). These kinds of annotations are gold for the search engines!

Top factors for Creating SEO-Friendly HTML

Here are the top factors for creating SEO-friendly HTML to improve search engine placement, according to this article:

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag: keep the overall length to about 65 characters
2. Keyword Use in Body Text: make sure you use good text for your link anchors, too.
3. Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords (Topic Analysis)
4. Keyword Use in H1 Tag
5. Keyword Use in Domain Name
6. Keyword Use in Page URL
7. Keyword Use in H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 Tags
8. Keyword Use in ALT Attributes and Image Titles: this greatly improves accessibility, too.
9. Keyword Use in Bold/Strong Tags (and Em)
10. Keyword Use in Meta Description Tag

Webmaster Tools

Both Google and Yahoo provide tools that allow Web developers to register and assess sites. The main thing you want to be sure to do is to register a sitemap for your site. This can be a structured XML file or a simple text file that lists the pages one by one. A sitemap ensures that the major search engines find every page on your site (this becomes more important when pages are dynamically-generated).

The excellent site SEOBOOK.com has a great page about SEO tools, and a lot more information on the site.