Here are some tips for search engine optimization:
Read Google patent of March 31, 2005. It?s long and tedious but it?s full of gems. Search for Google patent on Google. You?ll find it.
Here?s something interesting from the patent: Google tracks how many links you get and how quickly you get those links. In other words, if you add 100 links to your site, Google knows you?re trading links, not based on the quality of your content, but as part of link trading scheme. They don?t ban you for it, but they don?t boost your PageRank as much you might expect, either. Trading dozens of links a month is not smart. Likewise, buying temporary links to your site that go away in three months is not smart either. What you want are a slow and steady accumulation of permanent links from ANY high-ranking site, not just your niche. Also, put outbound links on your site to the biggest sites in the world and leave them forever, or until they break.
Don?t leave broken links on your site. Use Xenu link checker or something similar to find broken links and fix them. Fix them fast.
Use Xenu to create a site map. Link to site map from home page. Update site map every time you add new content to your site.
Place your site map on your 404 error page as well.
Use PhotoShop to create galleries. Customize the gallery page, a little. You can find the pages here: (backslash)Program Files(backslash)Adobe(backslash)Photoshop CS(backslash)Presets(backslash)Web Photo Gallery(backslash)Simple Make a copy of the originals before editing. Leave alone a lot of the automated stuff that PhotoShop places in the HTML. Just put a link back to your home page on every index page and on every picture page. Be sure to use good descriptive text and a title tag on the link.
Name your pictures descriptively in the gallery. For example, if you have pictures of green beans, be sure to give each picture a unique descriptive name, like Sexy-Slim-and-Sweet-French-Green-Bean.jpg. And then, if you don?t screw up PhotoShop automated process for creating a Web gallery, PhotoShop will put a title tag on the page called Sexy-Slim-and-Sweet-French-Green-Bean.jpg. It will put a caption below the picture called Sexy-Slim-and-Sweet-French-Green-Bean.jpg. And it will put an Alt tag on the picture called Sexy-Slim-and-Sweet-French-Green-Bean.jpg. And because its meta tags identify it as a PhotoShop generated page, Google seems to trust that indeed there is a picture of a Sexy-Slim-and-Sweet-French-Green-Bean on your page and sends users to that page.
Make your page title tags unique for each page but don?t stuff them with too many key words, just three or four, for example, French Green Bean.
Format your pages with CSS. First line of every page should be an H1 that repeats the key words that are in the page title tag, for example, French Green Bean. Also, on every page, make that unique H1 tag link back to your Home page. Give Google what it wants: Knowledge of what?s on your site.
A few ALT tags should have the key words if appropriate. For example, a picture of French Green Bean should have an ALT tag called French Green Bean. But don?t just stuff your ALT tags for no reason. That?s cheating. You get dinged for it.
First body paragraph on page should have the key words in it too, several times.
?French green beans can be good or French Green Beans can be stringy, but French Green Beans are my favorite Green Bean.? As the page goes on, stop repeating the word French Green Beans. Don?t use it too much.
Then, when you link to a page, you should place title tags in your links that refer to destination pages key words.
The above techniques are not cheating because you?re just giving information to your surfers. Just don?t go overboard or do something stupid like fill a whole paragraph with nothing but the word French Green Bean.
Provide good content and format your pages. Okay, say you operate a Web site that offers free pictures of French Green Beans. You have tons of galleries of French Green Beans. You are a freaking picture gallery expert. That being the case, write a technical article explaining how to create picture galleries and format the page like a professional publication would. Use CSS. Use an H1 tag, followed by body tag, followed by an H2 tag followed by a body tag. Use unordered lists (bullet points) for important points and ordered lists (numbered list) for step-step-procedures when you?re telling people what to click. And also use bold text when telling people what to click. Look at Microsoft Word online help for examples. Use screen captures and give those screen captures ALT tags. Page complete: Link to the page from as many pages as you can.
When you do share links, don?t give the name of your site as link (anchor) text, give the keywords that want Google to find as the anchor text. And be sure to provide your link partner with link title tags and the HTML code.
If you use a robots.txt file, be damn sure you know what you?re doing. Screwing up that file can hurt you a lot more than not using a robots.txt file.
TGP galleries, MGP galleries. These are good and you want to work with them. But first set up your own galleries just the way YOU want them, and then set up other galleries for the TGP and the MGP guys and their arbitrary guidelines.
What else: Don?t be a dumbass when linking to other people. Remember that people can link to ANY page in a site. Say a PR 7 links to a technical page deep within someone?s site. That technical page will eventually become PR 6 and, likely, the whole site will be a PR 6. But, if you just look at the home page of the PR 6 site, you?re not going to see the link from the PR 7. And, even if you go to the tech page and check the backlinks, you might not see the backlink. Here?s a quote from an SEO site (seocompany dot ca):
?BL Export: Backlink Export - export of a sample of the number of backlinks which is almost meaningless as it is only a sample number. "
You want links that go deep into your site. Google interprets that to mean your site has deep content. Sure, link to Home page but if you can get links to content deep in your site, go for it.
Any boosts you get in PageRank usually take a minimum of six months to show up.
Update, update, update. Update your site regularly. Those new pages will be PR 0 for a while and if they link to your Home page, yes, they will ding your PR, at first. But, overall, as time passes, the bigger your site is, the more pages it links to within itself, the more content it has, the bigger files it has, the higher your PR will be. Think Yahoo.
Alright, gotta go but remember this: I could be wrong about some of this stuff. So Google SEO and read read read read. Everyone has different opinions. Everyone tries different things. And criteria change. Read the Google patent. Sorry for the inevitable typos and good luck.
Read Google patent of March 31, 2005. It?s long and tedious but it?s full of gems. Search for Google patent on Google. You?ll find it.
Here?s something interesting from the patent: Google tracks how many links you get and how quickly you get those links. In other words, if you add 100 links to your site, Google knows you?re trading links, not based on the quality of your content, but as part of link trading scheme. They don?t ban you for it, but they don?t boost your PageRank as much you might expect, either. Trading dozens of links a month is not smart. Likewise, buying temporary links to your site that go away in three months is not smart either. What you want are a slow and steady accumulation of permanent links from ANY high-ranking site, not just your niche. Also, put outbound links on your site to the biggest sites in the world and leave them forever, or until they break.
Don?t leave broken links on your site. Use Xenu link checker or something similar to find broken links and fix them. Fix them fast.
Use Xenu to create a site map. Link to site map from home page. Update site map every time you add new content to your site.
Place your site map on your 404 error page as well.
Use PhotoShop to create galleries. Customize the gallery page, a little. You can find the pages here: (backslash)Program Files(backslash)Adobe(backslash)Photoshop CS(backslash)Presets(backslash)Web Photo Gallery(backslash)Simple Make a copy of the originals before editing. Leave alone a lot of the automated stuff that PhotoShop places in the HTML. Just put a link back to your home page on every index page and on every picture page. Be sure to use good descriptive text and a title tag on the link.
Name your pictures descriptively in the gallery. For example, if you have pictures of green beans, be sure to give each picture a unique descriptive name, like Sexy-Slim-and-Sweet-French-Green-Bean.jpg. And then, if you don?t screw up PhotoShop automated process for creating a Web gallery, PhotoShop will put a title tag on the page called Sexy-Slim-and-Sweet-French-Green-Bean.jpg. It will put a caption below the picture called Sexy-Slim-and-Sweet-French-Green-Bean.jpg. And it will put an Alt tag on the picture called Sexy-Slim-and-Sweet-French-Green-Bean.jpg. And because its meta tags identify it as a PhotoShop generated page, Google seems to trust that indeed there is a picture of a Sexy-Slim-and-Sweet-French-Green-Bean on your page and sends users to that page.
Make your page title tags unique for each page but don?t stuff them with too many key words, just three or four, for example, French Green Bean.
Format your pages with CSS. First line of every page should be an H1 that repeats the key words that are in the page title tag, for example, French Green Bean. Also, on every page, make that unique H1 tag link back to your Home page. Give Google what it wants: Knowledge of what?s on your site.
A few ALT tags should have the key words if appropriate. For example, a picture of French Green Bean should have an ALT tag called French Green Bean. But don?t just stuff your ALT tags for no reason. That?s cheating. You get dinged for it.
First body paragraph on page should have the key words in it too, several times.
?French green beans can be good or French Green Beans can be stringy, but French Green Beans are my favorite Green Bean.? As the page goes on, stop repeating the word French Green Beans. Don?t use it too much.
Then, when you link to a page, you should place title tags in your links that refer to destination pages key words.
The above techniques are not cheating because you?re just giving information to your surfers. Just don?t go overboard or do something stupid like fill a whole paragraph with nothing but the word French Green Bean.
Provide good content and format your pages. Okay, say you operate a Web site that offers free pictures of French Green Beans. You have tons of galleries of French Green Beans. You are a freaking picture gallery expert. That being the case, write a technical article explaining how to create picture galleries and format the page like a professional publication would. Use CSS. Use an H1 tag, followed by body tag, followed by an H2 tag followed by a body tag. Use unordered lists (bullet points) for important points and ordered lists (numbered list) for step-step-procedures when you?re telling people what to click. And also use bold text when telling people what to click. Look at Microsoft Word online help for examples. Use screen captures and give those screen captures ALT tags. Page complete: Link to the page from as many pages as you can.
When you do share links, don?t give the name of your site as link (anchor) text, give the keywords that want Google to find as the anchor text. And be sure to provide your link partner with link title tags and the HTML code.
If you use a robots.txt file, be damn sure you know what you?re doing. Screwing up that file can hurt you a lot more than not using a robots.txt file.
TGP galleries, MGP galleries. These are good and you want to work with them. But first set up your own galleries just the way YOU want them, and then set up other galleries for the TGP and the MGP guys and their arbitrary guidelines.
What else: Don?t be a dumbass when linking to other people. Remember that people can link to ANY page in a site. Say a PR 7 links to a technical page deep within someone?s site. That technical page will eventually become PR 6 and, likely, the whole site will be a PR 6. But, if you just look at the home page of the PR 6 site, you?re not going to see the link from the PR 7. And, even if you go to the tech page and check the backlinks, you might not see the backlink. Here?s a quote from an SEO site (seocompany dot ca):
?BL Export: Backlink Export - export of a sample of the number of backlinks which is almost meaningless as it is only a sample number. "
You want links that go deep into your site. Google interprets that to mean your site has deep content. Sure, link to Home page but if you can get links to content deep in your site, go for it.
Any boosts you get in PageRank usually take a minimum of six months to show up.
Update, update, update. Update your site regularly. Those new pages will be PR 0 for a while and if they link to your Home page, yes, they will ding your PR, at first. But, overall, as time passes, the bigger your site is, the more pages it links to within itself, the more content it has, the bigger files it has, the higher your PR will be. Think Yahoo.
Alright, gotta go but remember this: I could be wrong about some of this stuff. So Google SEO and read read read read. Everyone has different opinions. Everyone tries different things. And criteria change. Read the Google patent. Sorry for the inevitable typos and good luck.
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