Top Ten SEO Factors

Z

zak

HI
These are what I believe to be the top 10 most important things (not
necessarily in order) that you need, in order to get your website
found in the search engines.(think about http://www.frontstores.com
==Explore it )

There are many other factors as well, but if you follow these
guidelines, you'll stand a much better chance, and you'll be off to a
good start.

1. Title Meta Tag
The title tag is what displays as the headline in the SERPs (Search
Engine Results Pages). It's also what displays in the top blue band of
Internet Explorer when your site is displayed.

Your title tag of your website should be easy to read and designed to
bring in traffic. By that, I mean that your main keyword phrase should
be used toward the beginning of the tag. True there are websites being
found now that do not use the phrase in the title, but the vast
majority still do as of this writing
Don't make the mistake of putting your company name first, unless you
are already a household name, like Nascar or HBO. People are likely
searching for what you have to offer, not your name.

Your title tag should be written with a capital letter starting the
tag, and followed by all lowercase letters, unless you're using proper
nouns. Some people prefer to capitalize every word, too.

2. Description Meta Tag
The description tag is the paragraph that people will see when your
page comes up in the search results.

Your description tag should be captivating and designed to attract
business. It should be easy to read, and compel the reader to act
right now and follow your link. Without a description tag, search
engines will frequently display the first text on your page. Is yours
appropriate as a description of the page?

A proper description tag is what people will see below your title. You
should make proper use of punctuation, and with readability, use your
subject and geographical references.

3. Keywords Meta Tag
The importance of Meta keyword tags fluctuates from month to month
among different search engines. There is a debate in the SEO community
as to whether or not they help at all on certain search engines. In
fact, in the summer of 2004 it appeared as if they were losing
importance altogether.

However, you'll NEVER be penalized on any search engines for using
relevant targeted keywords in moderation, and they can only help you
with most, especially Yahoo.

Avoid stuffing your keyword metatags with too many keywords. Just use
relevant tags that apply directly to the content of that particular
page, and don't overdo it.

4. Alt Tags
The small yellow box that comes up when your mouse cursor is placed
over an image is called the ALT tag. Every relevant image should have
an alt tag with your key words or phrases mentioned in the tag.

A proper ALT tag goes after the file name, and before the Align
indicator. * - The ALT tag is no longer being considered for ranking
purposes by some search engines. That said, it still cannot HURT you,
and will still help you with some engines. My recommendation is to
continue to use them, but be sure to avoid keyword stuffing. Besides,
who nows when the pendulum will swing back the other way?

5. Header Tags
The text of each page is given more weight by the search engines if
you make use of header tags and then use descriptive body text below
those headers. Bullet points work well too. It is not enough to merely
BOLD or enlarge your text headlines.

6. Link Text
Search engine spiders cannot follow image links. In addition to having
image links or buttons on your web pages, you should have text links
at the bottom or elsewhere. The text that the user sees when looking
at the link is called the link text. A link that displays products
does not carry as much weight to the search engines as a link called
oregon widgets. Link text is very important, and is actually one of
the most frequently overlooked aspects of web design that I've seen.

7. Site Map
Using a site map not only makes it easy for your users to see the
entire structure of your website, but it also makes it easier for the
search engines to spider your site. When the search engine spiders
come to visit, they will follow all of the text links from your main
index page. If one of those links is to a site map, then the spiders
will go right to the sitemap, and consequently visit every page you
have text linked to from that site map. On the site map page, try to
have a sentence or two describing each page, and not just a page of
links.

8. Relevant Inbound Links
By relevant, I mean similar industry or subject related sites. Right
now, no single strategy can get your site ranked higher faster than
being linked to by dozens of other relevant websites. It used to be
that the quantity of incoming links mattered most, but today, it's
much better to have three highly relevant links to you from other
popular related websites than 30 links from unrelated low ranked
sites. If there are other businesses in your industry that you can
trade links with, it will help your site enormously. Link to others,
and have them link to you. It's proven, and it works. To see who's
linking to you, in Google type the following...
links: yourdomain.com
9. Your Content
Not to be forgotten of course, is the actual content of your webpage.
It must be relevant helpful information that people want to read.
These days, each webpage should be laser focused on one specific
product or subject, in order to rank highly for that search phrase.
The days of writing one webpage to appeal to dozens of search terms
are long gone. Ideally, each page should have between 400 to 650 words
on it. Too few, and the search engines won't consider it to be
relevant enough. Too many words and the search engine spiders may have
a hard time determining the actual subject or focus of the page.

Use your keywords or phrases often, and use them at the beginning of
your paragraphs wherever possible. Don't overuse them and make the
page sound phony, but don't write a page about a certain subject, and
not mention that subject repeatedly either. Reading it out loud to
yourself is a great way to judge how natural your text sounds.

Concentrate on writing quality pages that actually appeal to the human
reader. Write pages that provide the reader with exactly what they are
looking for; that is, information about the exact search phrase
they've entered.

10. Avoid Cheating
With all of these tidbits of information, it's tempting to think that
you can stuff 100 keywords into your title, or create a page with the
phrase oregon widget company being used 100 times in headers, text
links, ALT tags, bullet points etc. but that cannot help you. In fact,
it can penalize you, and get your website banned from certain search
engines.

THANK S
 
A

Andrew Thompson

These are what I believe to be the top 10 most important things (not
necessarily in order) that you need, in order to get your website
found in the search engines.

Your current post (like your two previous
posts to this group) is off-topic.

Please get clear on the fact that the topic
of discussion of this group is *Java*, not
JavaScript or search engine rankings.

Further, if you dared make your posts
to the relevant groups, I suspect the
contributors to those groups could point
out all the mistakes in your posts.

Andrew T.
 

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