Less Known SEO Techniques
Search Engine Optimization has become a must
when looking to drive relevant traffic to your website and gain top placement with
Search Engines. This article will point out a few techniques that are not as well
known or used as often by web developers. When used properly, these techniques may
give your website the extra little push needed to capture one of the coveted top
5 positions. At the end we will review of just few of the more common techniques
for beginners who may be reading this article.
Less Known SEO Techniques:
Technique #1 : Separate content from presentation
Most web developers already know that good content is the most important
part of gaining top placement with the major search engines. However,
not as many know that using external
CSS and JavaScript files will also help improve
your placement with search engines. This will decrease the overall size of your
page and improve your content to mark-up ratio. Additionally, this will move your
keyword rich content closer to the top of the page.
Technique #2 : Move keywords closer to the top of the page
Keyword density is an important part of showing search engines what
the content of the page is about. However, do not overdue it and simply stuff keywords
wherever you can. After all, if the content does not read well to the end user all
your optimization efforts have been wasted.
Search Engines will often place greater importance on keywords that are used at
the beginning of the page. Therefore, it is good practice to use your keywords within
the first few sentences of your content. It is important to not forget to use your
Keywords in the Page Title and Page Description. Also, while you are at it you may
as well include them in the Meta Keywords, even though it is almost obsolete tag.
Take it a step further:
Using CSS mark-up, you are often able to have the body of your page as
the first thing the search engine reads. This means when your webpage is displayed
in a browser it may have navigation and some tag lines shown at the top. However,
in your source code you can have the body of your page before the navigation and
tag lines. This will further move your keyword rich content to the top of the page
and improve your search engine rankings. (by body I mean the bulk of your content,
not the ‘body’ tag).
Technique #3 : Keyword Text Links and Internal Link Building
A link from one page to another is like casting a favorable vote for
that page. A pages total voting power is divided by the total number of outgoing
links from that page. That being said, for almost all websites the homepage has
the most PageRank, therefore, the most voting power. Make sure that all pages on
your website are only 2-3 clicks away; this is good practice all around.
Additionally, using one of the destination page’s keyword phrases as the anchor
text for your hyperlink assures the ability for Search Engines to know what the
page is about. Using keyword optimized linking is a much better method of optimizing
your pages for relevant keywords than using generic “click here” text.
Technique #4 : The Abbreviation tag or Acronym Tag
Everyone wants to write text as briefly as possible and we will often use Acronyms
or Abbreviations of longer text strings (Such as
SEO). An often overlooked way of
improving your Rankings in Search Engines is simply to include the long version
of these Abbreviations in the abbr or acronym tag. Doing this will increase your
keywords density for specific phrases.
Technique #5 : Table Headings and Table Captions
Tables should not be used to compose the layout of your website. However, if you
have some tabular data to display, using tables is a fine way to accomplish this.
A little used technique to improve your Search Engine Rankings while using tables
is the Table Header Tag and the Table Caption Tag to tell Search Engines what your
table is about.
Technique #6 : Heading Tags, they do go to down to h6
Almost anyone who has done research in
SEO techniques can tell you the h1 tag can
be your best friend. However, if you overuse the h1 tag on a page it will begin
to decrease the effect. Consider using the h2 and h3 tags in conjunction with the
h1 tag. This will allow the keywords contained within the h1 tag to carry more weight
with the Search Engine, while still placing emphasis on keywords inside the other
heading tags.
Reviewing a Few Common SEO
Techniques for beginners
#1 : Unique Page Titles, Page Description, and META Keywords
Arguably one of the most important On-Site
SEO techniques is ensuring Relevant Page
Titles are used. Additionally, the page description should be relevant to the page
and contain the keywords you wish to target the page for. The META Keywords tag
has become almost obsolete, but it certainly never hurts to create one as a placeholder
for your keywords. Just be sure not to overdo it and stuff the META Keywords tag
full of keywords that are not relevant to your page.
#2: Use the alt attribute in image tags
Almost all websites will contain at least a few images. When using these images,
be sure to include the alt attribute to tell Search Engines what the image is about.
As a general rule you should not use an image to replace text unless it is necessary
to appease the aesthetics of the website. Using the alt attribute for images is
also good practice to help individuals who use screenreaders.
#3 Include a sitemap
Sitemaps are a good way to help all your pages get indexed by Google. You can also
submit an xml sitemap to Google using their Webmaster Tools. If you are not already
using Webmaster Tools I highly recommend it along with Google Analytics. Together,
these tools provide a great deal of information about how visitors and Search Engines
see your Website.
#4 Link Popularity
One of the most important parts of SEO is
building good inbound links to your website. Building links back to your website
from other trusted, well Ranked websites will help your own website build trust
and PageRank. If you are a beginner to SEO and are not familiar with this I recommend
gathering some information about link building.
Conclusion:
This is certainly not the end-all / be-all of Search Engine Optimization. I have
not even touched on Off Site Optimization. Using these lesser known techniques will
help your webpages get the extra little boost that is sometimes needed to get within
the Top 5 positions within Search Engine results.
