Top 20 SEO Tips & Guidelines: Free Search Engine Optimization

1. If you don’t want too much competition from other SEO’s, choose your keywords precisely. For example, Instead of keyword Loan choose keywords like Bank Loan, Equity Loan, Student Loan, Home Loan etc. Order of keyword also matter for search engines. Search engine treats “Loan Equity” and “Equity Loan” as different keywords.

2. Best seo practice is to get at least one of your primary keywords in domain or sub domain name of your website. You can use hyphens (-) to separate multiple keywords. For example: seo-service, seo-guidelines, free-seo each cover two keywords.

3. Get your second or third keywords in your directory name and filename. For example http://www.hiddentricks.com/seo/free-tips.html is best for keyword “free seo tips” , “seo hidden tricks” or "free seo tricks"

4. Keep your webpage free from any syntax error, declare document type at the beginning and validate your HTML and CSS because search engine don’t like pages with too many errors.

5. Give a short Title in of your page in 3-9 words (60-80 characters) maximum in length containing your primary keyword. Remember it will be displayed in search results so choose wisely.

6. Try to include your most important keyword phrases in heading tags on your page if you can but keep in mind it should not be exactly same as title of your page. You can use (H1 H2 H3) tag for specifying anything important. To reduce size of heading use CSS.

7. Specify Meta keywords in heading of document. Limit it to 15 to 20 words. Although not all the search engines give importance but there is no harm doing it. Search engine like Yahoo still give it importance.

8. Write Your Meta Description tag attractive containing keywords because it will appear on the search engine result pages.

9. Use text for navigation menu instead of using images or Java scripts.

10. Try to include your most important keyword in hyperlinked text and text and text that immediately precedes or follows the hyperlink. Do not use same keyword always use synonyms at few places.Jusk like instead of seo, I have use search engine optimization at many places on this page.

11. If you are using images then use “alt” attribute to describe your image with proper keyword.

12. One of the best webmaster guideline is to submit sitemap of your website to make sure all pages of your website are indexed by search engine crawlers.

13. Keep size of your WebPages less than 50KB so it is downloaded fast and visitors don’t have to wait for long. For good SEO site page size ideal should be 15KB.

14. Try to avoid your content in Flash, frame, images, java script because crawler find it very difficult and it is against seo tips and guidelines.

15. Don’t use dynamic url because it don’t contain keywords so its not search engine friendly. If you are using any script which shows dynamic pages then make sure at least it should include one keyword.

16. Don’t try to spam and never use methods like cloaking, keyword spamming or doorway pages. Many seo advices to have multiple domain name and link each other but according to our SEO tips and guidelines search engine can penalize you for this. Instead of that try to add more quality content to your existing website.

17. Submit your website only once to Google, Yahoo, AltaVista and other search engines and open directory. Don’t use any script or website for automatic submission.

18. If your website contents changes very often then provide visitor with Newsletter and RSS feed.

19. Write articles on website related to yours having higher page ranking and leave your websites link.

20. Get link from other sites related to yours, search engine consider it as vote in your favor.

By following our top 20 tips and some other guidelines provided by us you can get in top 10 positions in SERP’s.

SEO Tips $ Guidelines

ALT Text: "Alternative Text" that is placed in the code for an image in an HTML page. Text provided with an image as an alternative to viewing the actual image. It will appear before the image is fully loaded, if your visitor has their graphics turned off, and if your visitor positions their mouse on the image. Alt text is also important because search engine spiders often read it.

Adsense: "Google AdSense" is a fast and easy way for website publishers to display relevant, unobtrusive Google ads on their web site's content pages and earn money. The ads are related to what your users are looking for on your site, you'll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages.

Adwords: “Google AdWords" is a quick and simple way to advertise on Google. AdWords ads are displayed along with search results on Google, as well as on search and content sites in the growing Google Network, including AOL, earth link, HowStuffWorks, and Blogger. With searches on Google and page views on the Google Network each day, your Google AdWords ads reach a vast audience.

Banned: When pages are removed from a search engine's index specifically because the search engine has deemed them to be spamming or violating some type of guidelines. A Google page rank of 0 for an established domain name, can often indicate a website has been banned. The most common causes of getting banned are duplicate sites and duplicate content.

Cookie: The browser stores information in a file called cookie.txt and relays that information back to the server each time the browser requests a page. Cookies are what make it possible for sites to remember your user login, password, name or other personalized information.

Domain Name Registration: The first step in building a website is registering a domain name. Whether you register your name with a registrar or your web host (who will register your domain name through a registrar for you) is merely a matter of convenience and preference. When a name is registered you are purchasing the right to the use of that name for the agreed amount of years at registration, usually 1-10 years. No one else may use that name with your specified extension (.com, .net) until you either let the name expire or you sell it to someone else.

Doorway Pages: Doorway pages are pages specifically made for the search engines. Doorway pages contain many links - often hundreds of links - that are of little to no use to the user, and do not contain any valuable content. Search Engines frown on these practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users. Sites making use of doorway pages may be removed from the major search engines.

Duplicate Sites and Duplicate Content: Multiple pages, sub domains, or domains with substantially duplicate content. Duplicate sites or content are considered as SPAM by most search engines, and can get your site banned from the search engines.

Gateway Pages: A Web page submitted to individual search engine spiders to meet specific relevancy algorithms. The gateway page presents information to the spider while obscuring it from human viewers. The purpose of gateway pages is to present the spider with the format it needs for optimum rankings while presenting a more appropriate version to human viewers. It's also a way for Webmasters to avoid publicly disclosing placement tactics. The use of gateway pages customizes submission to each individual search engine. Also known as doorway pages, bridge pages, entry pages, portals or portal pages.

Hidden Text: Text on a web page which is visible to search engine spiders but not visible to human visitors (e.g. the text is the same or very similar color as the background of the web page, extremely small font is used, usage of multiple TITLE tags, the text in HTML comment, etc.). As this technique could artificially increase the relevancy of the websites and was abused in the past it's treated as SPAM by most search engines.

Host: A host is the company who actually provides the hardware, servers, backbone connections, backup system etc, where your web site is housed. It is their job to make sure your web site is available to site visitors on the World Wide Web around the clock.

Keyword Density: The number of times a keyword is used on a web page divided by the total number of words on the page. Expressed as a percentage. Some search engines use this property for Positioning. Analyzers are available which allow comparisons between pages. Pages can then be produced with the similar keyword densities to those found in high ranking pages.

Link Exchange: When you put a link on your site to another company's site and they reciprocate by putting a link to your company's site on theirs. If other sites link to your website, your website may be considered more popular.

Link exchanges can also hurt you if they are the wrong type. If the website on which your link will appear is just a long list of links (see Link Farm), many search engines consider this to be search engine SPAM that is a way of trying to trick the search engines into thinking your website is popular. They may penalize you or even ban your site from the search engine altogether.

Link Farm: A set of link web pages that have been built for the sole purpose of increasing the number of incoming links to a website to increase link popularity and search engine rankings. Link farms usually require a reciprocal link from sites seeking listings. Link farms are a known SPAM tactic and participating sites are likely to be penalized or banned from the major search engines.

Meta Tag: A meta tag is an element of HTML that often describes the contents of a Web page, and is placed near the beginning of the page's source code. Search engines use information provided in a meta tags to index pages by subject.

PageRank™: Google's patented algorithm to determine the importance of a web page, taking into account factors such as the content of the page, the number of inbound links and the build quality of the page. Page rank as a number between 0 and 10 as shown by the green bar on the Google Tool bar. All new websites start out as page rank 0. Page rank scores are updated quarterly.

Search Engine Submission: To suggest a website to be included in a search engine or directory, so that it may be evaluated and included in search results.

SPAM: The bane of computer existence, SPAM is the pollution of unsolicited e-mail and the misuse of mailing lists to send a message to large amounts of people who did not ask for the e-mail to be sent. This strange term is generally agreed to have originated from a Monty Python skit where the term is repeatedly used. SPAM is also a processed canned meat product and a registered trademark of Hormel foods.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization is the constantly changing and very competitive practice of designing websites and pages to rank as highly as possible in search results from search engines. When a search is done in a search engine the first websites to appear on the list under sponsored links are the best search engine optimized sites for the keyword entered in.

Unique Visitor: Website traffic measurement where each person's individual IP address visiting a particular website is counted only once, regardless of how many times they visit that particular website in a given day.

Internet Definitions

Link Building Guide

Update: I have developed a new link building service based on this article, check out: Smart Link Building

Introduction

I have been providing many thousands of links to my SEO clients and I have myself established a number of PR6 sites and almost won the biggest SEO contest ever with the means of huge link power.

The purpose of this article is to help you in your link building using 5 steps.

1. Study and understand the guidelines for a natural simulation.
2. Study and understand your link profile.
3. Study and understand the effective ways to get links.
4. Work out your own link building program.
5. Get the links!

This article is based on my opinion and what I believe. (use at your own risk).

Guidelines for a Natural Simulation

The majority of your back links you acquire should:

Have a varied anchor text

Target your keywords but make very sure to vary the anchor a lot. Even a few “click here” is good to get.

Come from related pages

This is probably the most important, especially for English web sites. It is commonly believed that links from related pages carries more “weight” (not PR).

Come from different locations on the linking pages.

Don’t have all the back links from footers or any other specific place. Have them on the top of the page, inside the body text, navigation, footer etc.

Placed with a gradual natural increase

Don’t place hundreds or thousands of links to a new site the first days … I have tested that and gotten the site banned in Google. You need to gradually place the links and the quantity all relates to how much links the site is usually getting. So if a site usually gets 10 new links per week then don’t place 100 suddenly one day.

Placed from pages with a varied PR value

In my opinion not more than 15-20% of your back links to a site should be from PR 5+ pages.

Come from good neighborhood

Don’t have a majority of your back links from adult, pharmacy, and poker/casino sites. Such sites are known to spam and I am pretty sure Google frowns upon them.

Come from different C-class IPs

Google sees this. Have your links coming from total different sites.

Come from both old trusted as well as new sites

It is also good to mix this up.

Come from reciprocal linking

Reciprocal links are still good but don’t have them as a majority of your back links. 3-way-linking is a good alternative but don’t use any patter.

Point to internal pages as well as your home page

Never underestimate back links pointing to your internal pages. As you have your internal pages SEO’d as well, get back links to these as well with varied anchor. It is been speculating that the value of these has increased during the big daddy update.

Come from non-directories

A selected few directories such as ODP and Yahoo carries trust in Google from the editorial vote. However, many directories does not give that and I even suspect that having a majority of your back links from 200 free general directories even can do harm to your link profile. They can still be good but should just be something extra to the links you already have.

Not be temporary

The age of your back links is important. It has even been speculated that this is a factor of the Google Sandbox filter. Strive to get permanent links. When renting links, rent for as long as possible.

Not have paid linking footprints around them

Words such as sponsors, advertisement and the like are spotted by Google and are devalued. If the majority of your back links come from such links it could maybe even do you harm.

Not come from pages that links to bad neighborhood

You should not place your links on pages that are in bad neighborhood, but you should also not place them on sites that them self link to these kind of sites. Google uses advanced relation and co-citation systems in their also.

Come from pages with the same language

Seem to be obvious but is very important to show up properly in the Google country specific searches. It seems to be from my recent observations that this is the most important factor in determining the language of the site for Google (other factors is IP, Domain name TLD and actual written language of the site).

Your Link Profile

Study the above Guidelines for a Natural Simulation and write down the points your site is in danger for to get a potential unnatural flag warning from search engines. Those are the points that you should not continue with.

Effective ways to get links

Link Baiting

This is the single most important method. It has mainly to do with good content that gets links the natural way. To keep things simple in this guide I have decided that everything that makes people link to you because of the content on the page/site falls under this category of link baiting. You need to read this post I wrote on link baiting.
Comments: Pure white hat, recommended but sadly not very effective if not something real major.

Directory submissions/Link Building using directories

There are specialized SEOs and Link Builders that are doing directory submissions. There are 4 kinds of directories here: pay-for-inclusion, reciprocal required, free and niche directories. And there are of course specialists in each one of these. There are almost one thousand free SEO friendly general directories, a list of these and a submission service can be seen here. As for placement in reciprocal directories there are both brokers and non-brokers.
Comments: Cheap way to get many low quality links. Can take months before effect is seen. Deep links usually not possible. New edit and comment on this: since big daddy Google has been smashing and de indexed internal pages on a lot of directories, but the indexed pages still show a PR value even though they are de indexed. Keep this in mind and run a site: command or type the URL of the internal page in Google to see if the directory/page has been hit.

Link Exchange, 2 and 3 ways

The good old way. I link to you and you link to me. This is more useful if you have 30 or more sites as you can get and provide relevant links. Rule of thumb: you contact people, not the opposite. There are also Reciprocal Link Programs but I don’t recommend that.
Comments: Don’t overdue it …

High PR-subscriptions (Grey Hat?)

You can rent PR 5-9 text links at various places for various prices. Cheap places I had some very good success with: here, here and here.
Comments: Don’t get too many high PR links too fast, get relevant if possible.

Link-Vault

I am myself getting 200 permanent links a day from this program to 40 URLs, all with varied anchor. The links you get from this program are mostly footer links and other low quality links but the program is extremely powerful. Do not, I repeat, do not display Link-Vault ads on your most valuable web sites - that is a red flag, especially since BigDaddy.
Comments: Only negative is that the links are mostly footer and the relevancy is not that good, other than that it is great.

DP Coop Ads (Grey Hat)

This program gives you a lot of rotating temporary back links from mostly footers of sites. I have been using this program successfully to boost SE RP ranks in Google, especially at the V7N SEO contest. This program is extremely powerful as well as dangerous and can have your site banned or harmed if you are not careful. My rule of thumb: maximum 5K weight on a single ad. At one moment I had 120K weight and I was getting many many thousands of links to more than 40 ads that I had.
Comments: Remember that these are all footer, irrelevant, temporary and with fast growth.

Linking from your own web sites

This is an excellent way if you have many relevant pages in the same niche.
Comments: Don’t interlink all, keep sites on different C-class IPs and avoid patterns.

Pay bloggers

You can post on the business section of webmaster forums stating that you will pay to get the blogger to blog about and link to your site. Example.
Comment: Good to get the word out. The blog post will over time be buried down in the blog structure.

Article submission

Write an article with links in the article and/or in the resource section to your site. Or pay someone to write these for you. Use specialist (example) to have these submitted to article directories such as this one.
Comment: Long term strategy, takes time to see effects. Can be good for traffic.

Search the SERPS and make offers. (Jim Boykins specialty)

Yahoo and MSN both gives some extremely valuable information in regards to back links. Both of the engines tend to list the site with the most link power first in a back link query.

Study and understand the following queries:

• seo linkdomain:seobook.com -site:seobook.com linkdomain:seomoz.org -site:seomoz.org -link:jimwestergren.com (MSN or Yahoo)
  = Sites containing SEO, that link to both seobook.com and seomoz.org but not to jimwestergren.com.
• site:jimwestergren.com link building (Google)
  = Which page on the domain jimwestergren.com is most relevant and has the most power for the query link building?
• site:jimwestergren.com (Yahoo)
  = Which page on the domain jimwestergren.com has the most power? Not always the home page and the list is interesting to see. You can do the same in Google if you find the right query, valid example.

Use both of the above examples in this technique and send off a nice e-mail on your link offer to the ones you choose.
Comment: Expensive …

Make directories and make the link submitter reciprocal to a site of your choice.

I use this on 2 general directories of mine. My directories are free but the link submitter gets his link featured if he reciprocal with my other site. I get about 10 links per week using this.
Comments: Irrelevant, certain percentage come from bad neighborhood and not always from same language.

Write testimonials and reviews

Write and send a testimonial to your web host, web designer, web developer and SEO. They probably publish it at their site and if you are lucky they link to you as well. Send a review to your favorite sites and have your name and link at the bottom of it.
Comments: Time consuming …

Links under articles

This is a new method I developed myself, here. In the future I think more will start to use this as well. It enables to link builder to exactly specify which articles, the anchor and the URL of each link. Good for deep pages.
Comments: All same IP. Permanent.

There are more ways but the ones above are the ones that I deem effective,

My Recommendation

Use a mix of all the above ways to get links but follow what you wrote down when you studied your link profile.

Good luck!
Let me know if you had use of it.

Link Building Guide