Tuesday, June 2, 2009

6 Best Practices for Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a science for some people while it's an art for others. But whatever way you see it, SEO is about optimizing your website in such a way that it complies with the qualities search engine algorithms (also known as crawlers) look for when ranking a site high in search results.
If you want your website to land on the first page of search results associated with a certain set of keywords, here are 6 quick SEO tips to give you the edge you need:
1.) Build your link popularity by getting as many websites as you can to link back to your own site. It's much better if your site gets linked back by a more popular website. To crawlers, this means your site is good enough to be recommended by other people, and thus it results to better rankings.
2.) If your site has many pages, it's best to have a site map. Make sure all the pages of your site link back to it. To crawlers, a site map means easy navigation, and this is a good thing for them because it makes it faster for them to go over your site.
3.) Use popular and relevant keywords related to your site. The more searched-for your keywords are, the more in demand your site will be to the crawlers. This will lead to higher search engine rankings.
4.) Better than link exchanges, article exchanges provide more assurance of higher rankings. In article exchanges, it's not only your site's link that gets posted in other places, but also your content. For crawlers that give special attention to content, this is a good thing.
5.) The anchor text is the textual representation of a hyperlink. If you have several anchor texts in your site, make sure that they vary. If they all look the identical, crawlers will think you employed automation. For Google, that's enough to get you banned.
5.) Post high quality content in your website. Crawlers are concerned first and foremost with quality, so finding a shortcut around this will not work for you in the long run. Take time to sit down and produce high quality content because it's enough to attract readers and gain popularity through word of mouth, reposting, and recommendations.
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Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 9034 articles in print and 14 published ebooks.