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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are techniques to make your web pages come up higher in search engine (e.g. google lists)

Search engines used to rely things like the meta tags "keywords", title, description in the header of web pages to index on synonyms related to the topic, but web page authors started abusing this to put all kinds of keywords not related to their topic to get more hits, so many of the search engines de-emphasize them now.

Most search engine algorithms now include link popularity, which started with Google's PageRank that ranked individual pages based on the number and importance of pages linked to them. You can't do much about this other than get your friends to link to your pages.

Google is constantly changing their algorithm for ranking and nobody knows what it is.

No-Nos:

  • Don't trick people by using cloaking techniques so search engines see things that user do not.
  • Don't have titles or keywords that don't relate to your content (keyword stuffing).
  • Don't change the font size to 1 or 0 or the font color to match the background (font matching), so search engines will find words which don't actually show up in the page because the text is not visible.
  • Search engines may actually move a pages priority way down if they use these techniques.
  • If Google catches you passing PageRank from a paid link, they view it as spam, and you could end up being removed from Google's database. Use the nofollow tag to avoid getting in trouble.
  • Don't duplicate too much content
See: 10 Google Dont's - Things You Should Never Do for Search Engine Optimization

There are many companies and consultants which you can hire to optimize your web site. Some useful techniques:

  • Most experts agree that keywords in the title have a greater weight than keywords in the body text.
  • Use actual text for headings rather than graphics (gif, png, jpg) with stylized text which can't be read by search engines.
  • Use alt tags (e.g. <img src="images/tahoe.gif" alt="Lake Tahoe Map">) in images.
  • Update your site frequently
  • have a robots.txt file present in your root directory.

Links:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) at Google's Webmasters/Site owners Help
SEO Best Practices for Web Site Design at pandia.com
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) at about.com
14 SEO copywriting tips | SEO content creation advice
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last updated 25 May 2009