While there are many approaches to Search Engine Optimization one can take, I have found that a few simple tips can help you keep your site ranking well with minimal effort. I will only focus on SEO related to your page structure and content in this article, for brevity.
Topic specific content: Place content on pages that is uniform. For instance, if you are a web host, create a full page just talking about dedicated hosting. This gives the specific page an edge over other companies who discuss all of their plans on one page (because of your higher percentage of topic-specific keywords).
Descriptive short titles: Use short titles (5-7 words), with the most specific information appearing earliest. For instance, if you are a web host, and you have a dedicated hosting page, a good title would be: dedicated hosting, reliable service by PowerHost.
The long titles don’t work well because they are more likely to be viewed as spam pages by Google, as well as confuse readers. Most people know where they are once they are on a site, and have more use for the location within the site before the site name.
Proper Headings: Use the H1-H5 tags in HTML in order to let your visitors and search engines understand what is important relative to the rest of your content. For example, make a short paragraph on each page that describes the page, and title it in an H1 heading.
This has become a very common feature of Web 2.0 sites since it both helps your Search Engine Optimization efforts and assists in clarity of your site among readers.
Contextual Linking: Include links that match your content topic in your content. You can either link to internal pages on your site, or related pages on other sites. The links however, should include titles, not just display the URL (for example: Online News).
Google checks these links and uses it to “classify” sites. They assume that links will have relevant text to the site they are linking to.
This of course, is just a quick “tune up” of your site, there are many other search engine optimization methods you can use to rank highly in Google and other top search engines.
Article by Pinny Cohen – Pinny has been optimizing sites for clients for almost a decade, and specializes in the web hosting industry’s keywords. He runs a blog over at http://www.pinnycohen.com which covers many topics including marketing, web 2.0, consumer behavior, entrepreneurialism, and healthy living.
