Organic SEO - a few key points
Search engines are getting cleverer all the time. You can try to outsmart them but to me it makes more sense to work WITH them. They're gradually getting better at sifting out low quality websites and ranking them poorly. So build high quality websites containing genuinely useful material that other people want to link to. The basics of good search engine optimization are fairly simple. Here's a very quick summary:
• You need to make it easy for a search engine to figure out the topic of your page.
• Find appropriate keywords or key phrases and use them in the title, in the page heading, in the introduction, throughout the article, in the meta description, in alt tags, at the end of the article, in links on the page, in bold or italics, and perhaps in a list on the page.
• Use key phrases in your file names, for example: keyword1-keyword2.html.
• Use synonyms and word variations naturally throughout the page.
• When linking to your pages, use appropriate keywords in the anchor text (the words people click on). Do this for links throughout your site, and also on other people's sites which link to yours. Vary the anchor text.
• For internal links, it's better to use text than graphical links.
• Create a logical navigation system so that humans and search engines can easily find the content on your site.
• Get links from other sites to internal pages as well as to your main page.
This is just a brief overview of a big topic. If you want excellent, reliable advice on search engine optimization, there's one place I recommend above all others. It's the resource the professionals use - Stephen Mahaney and his team at Planet Ocean. These guys do nothing but search engine optimization. They're experts. I've been a subscriber for years. Planet Ocean is an often recommended resource because it publishes a search engine optimization newsletter and an excellent book which is updated every month, so you can rest assured the information you're reading is right up to date.
