Words From a Purple Mind

Have you heard of this thing called search engine optimization (SEO)? You know the process of improving ranking in search engine results. There are lots of articles, tips & blogs out there on SEO. There are some great tips out there and since you don’t have time to read every single blog/article I thought I’d give you the quick run down of what you should & shouldn’t do:

1. Check those tags.
   • Verify that you have tags on EVERY page for your titles, headings, keywords, hyperlinks & images
   • Verify that your title tag is no more than 60 characters.
   • Verify that your title is an eye catcher making visitors want know more
   • Verify that your meta description is no more than 155 characters
   • Verify that your keywords match the content
2. Got a map? A sitemap that is.
   • Verify that you have a available for your visitors and the search engines
   • Verify that you have submitted your sitemap to the search engines.
3. Check the robots file
   • Verify that you have a robots.txt file
   • Verify that you mark the correct folders as “Disallow” so the robots focus on your content
4. Don’t cloak
   • Cloaking is a technique of delivering a certain set of pages to search engine crawlers, while at the same time delivering a completely different set of pages to your visitors. Don’t do this as it will get you banned for the search engines.



5. How’s your content?
   • Write valuable content. Visitors & search engines like valuable content.
   • Do NOT duplicate content. No body wants to click different links just to end up seeing the same content.
   • Do NOT hide text like putting keywords in your background. This is called keyword stuffing and search engines do not like it.
6. Don’t forget the competition
   • Check how your competition is doing in the search engines, what keywords are working for them and not you
   • Check to see what their quality and quantity of incoming links
7. Fix those file names
   • Don’t have file names for images or docs that make no sense. If it’s an image of a boat name it boat not IMG001.
   • Have images that match your keywords.
8. Checklists & Validators
   • Checklists and validators are great to use to make sure your site is search engine friendly as well as working.
   • Verify there are no broken links on your site by using a link checker every few months.
   • Analyze your HTML & CSS to check to see if it’s up to date with the latest technology
9. Link Building
   • Link building is great but don’t go overboard.
   • Get linked to sites that are relevant to your content.
10. Social Media
    • It’s important to get on the social media sites because not only are they good for networking but they are also search engine friendly.

I hope these tips help you with your SEO efforts. Do you have any other tips?