8 Essential SEO Techniques

1) Title Tag - The title tag is the most powerful on-site SEO technique you have, so use it creatively! What you place in the title tag should only be one thing, the exact keyword you used for the web page that you are trying to optimize. Every single web page should have it's own title tag.

2) ALT Tags - ALT tags were meant to be for text browsers because the images didn't show in text browsers and the ATL tags would tell the visitor what it's about. You should put your main keyword(s) in the ALT tags, but don't over do it because you could get dropped in the results or even worse banned for life!

3) Link Popularity - Link popularity is the most powerful SEO tool out of all them. Most search engines don't even consider web sites if there is not at least one or two links pointing to the web site. Having another site(s) link to your web site is important when it comes to getting your site a good ranking. Your keywords should be in the links you get and keep the keywords short. When you receive requests for a link exchange, check the site out before linking with them, check for spam (Repeat keywords, hidden text, etc.).

4) Keyword Density - This is also vital and should be used with research. You should use the keyword(s) once in the title tag, once in the heading tag, once in bold text, and get the density between 5% to 20% (Don't over do it!). Also use your keyword(s) both low and high on the web page, keyword(s) should be in the first sentence and in the last one.

5) Page Size - Your web page's speed is important to your visitors and the search engines. Why? Because the robots will be able to spider your web page faster and easier. Try your best to keep your web page over 5k and under 15k in size.

6) Rich Theme - Search engines are looking at themes more and more. Build content (Articles, FAQ, tips, etc.) much as possible and keep the web pages around 200 to 500 words. Create content that's related to your market and link them out to other related content on your site. Try to get 200 web pages or more.

7) Web Site Design - This is also important, if you want to get indexed! Text content should out weigh the HTML content. The pages should validate and be usable in all of today's leading edge browsers. Stay away from flash and Java Script, search engines dislike them both a lot.

8) Insite Cross Linking - This will help you get all of your web pages indexed by the search engines. Your web pages should be no more than three clicks away from the home page. Link to topic related quality content across your site. This will also help build you a better theme through out your web site. On every page you should link back to your home page and your main service(s).

Search Engine Architecture

To understand SEO you need to be aware of the architecture of search engines. They all contain the following main components:

Spider - a browser-like program that downloads web pages.

Crawler – a program that automatically follows all of the links on each web page.

Indexer - a program that analyzes web pages downloaded by the spider and the crawler.

Database– storage for downloaded and processed pages.

Results engine – extracts search results from the database.

Web server – a server that is responsible for interaction between the user and other search engine components.

Specific implementations of search mechanisms may differ. For example, the Spider+Crawler+Indexer component group might be implemented as a single program that downloads web pages, analyzes them and then uses their links to find new resources. However, the components listed are inherent to all search engines and the seo principles are the same.

Spider: This program downloads web pages just like a web browser. The difference is that a browser displays the information presented on each page (text, graphics, etc.) while a spider does not have any visual components and works directly with the underlying HTML code of the page. You may already know that there is an option in standard web browsers to view source HTML code.

Crawler: This program finds all links on each page. Its task is to determine where the spider should go either by evaluating the links or according to a predefined list of addresses. The crawler follows these links and tries to find documents not already known to the search engine.

Indexer: This component parses each page and analyzes the various elements, such as text, headers, structural or stylistic features, special HTML tags, etc.

Database: This is the storage area for the data that the search engine downloads and analyzes. Sometimes it is called the index of the search engine.

Results Engine: The results engine ranks pages. It determines which pages best match a user's query and in what order the pages should be listed. This is done according to the ranking algorithms of the search engine. It follows that page rank is a valuable and interesting property and any seo specialist is most interested in it when trying to improve his site search results. In this article, we will discuss the seo factors that influence page rank in some detail.

Web server: The search engine web server usually contains a HTML page with an input field where the user can specify the search query he or she is interested in. The web server is also responsible for displaying search results to the user in the form of an HTML page.

Advanced Search Engine Optimization Techniques

The ladders covered up to this point are all quite normal and commonly agreed upon. However more advanced techniques are less simple. There are many different thoughts about what works and what the most successful strategies are. In addition, each search engine works slightly differently and advanced strategies require you to consider these differences.

It pays to learn as much as you can about different ideas and trends, and spend time deciding which is most suitable for you. Most likely, you will find a certain combination of techniques is the best plan.

To simplify the situation we can say there are two main areas of SEO:

1. Content-based SEO: Building and optimizing the content of your website.
2. Non-Content SEO: Any optimization technique which is unrelated to the actual content of the site.

The comparative benefits of these techniques are debated regularly in SEO circles. Many people lean heavily toward one philosophy or the other; that is, "Content Is King" versus "Content is Secondary". The arguments can get very heated but our advice is not to take either side too strongly. Both philosophies are perfectly valid and should co-exist peacefully. The smart webmaster will carefully consider all techniques and work towards the best mix.