General SEO Guidelines
SEO is ongoing. In fact some say it is never ending. That may well be true, but what else is true is that doing it incorrectly even one time can cost you a lot in the overall scheme of things. Here are a few things to think about with your SEO, the algorithms that measure your standards, and your standard site building.
Design & Content
• You should build your web pages for human beings and not for search engines. A clean design and a strong content will ultimately drive search engine spiders to your site.
• Make a clear hierarchy and provide text links to each page.
• Don’t put to many links on a single page (maximum 100).
• Make sure you have clear TITLE tags, no HTML errors and all the links work.
• You should use text instead of images to display important elements, as search engine crawlers may not recognize a text inside an image.
• While keeping your content useful and clear, do use keywords that you know users would type to get to your page.
Technical Issues
• Most search engine crawlers see your website similar to the way a text browser sees it. Consequently, you should use a text browser, such as Lynx, to check your website. If you can’t see the whole page because of JavaScript, session IDs, DHTML or Flash features, search engine spiders will probably have trouble with crawling your website.
• Check with your web host to see if the server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This header tells Google whether the website content has changed since its last visit.
• While it is advised session IDs to track visitors’ path through the website, you shouldn’t do this for search bots.
• The robots.txt file on your web server tells spiders which directories can be crawled and which cannot. Make sure it’s updated and it doesn’t somehow block search engine crawlers.
Website Promotion
• After you’ve built your website and put it online, try to get high PageRank sites with good Authority to link to it.
• Submit your website to relevant directories, such as Yahoo and Open Directory Project.
• Get involved in community based websites, blogs and forums and build a strong reputation.
Whether you choose to implement these techniques yourself or go to a SEO expert, no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google and other search engines. Search engines change their crawling algorithms often and competitor websites appear all the time.