Basic SEO Tips

These simple SEO techniques  can make a significant difference in your Search Engine Queries.

1. Use proper anchor text for inter-links. Don’t use “here”, “there” etc for the anchor text (if you can avoid it).
2. Optimize the images, always create alt tags and write description in the alt tag.
3. Use search engine friendly permalinks. Try not to have too many ‘&’, ‘?’, ‘!’ etc characters in the URL. Sometimes it is unavoidable but try to keep it to a minimum.
4. Use hyphens (-) between words to improve readability.
5. Do not use underscores (_) in URLs, use hyphens (-) instead.
6. Do not use session id in URLs. If you are using good hosting then you shouldn’t have to worry about this one.
7. Use internal linking when possible and appropriate.
8. Use sticky posts (if you can).
9. Use tag clouds (if it applies).
10. Have a category description paragraph.
11. Let the visitors subscribe to category specific RSS feed. (Use category specific RSS plugin for WordPress)
12. Use rel=”nofollow” tag on low value links to not pass the page rank juice. For example “Read the rest of the entry”, “About”, “Contact” etc.
13. Use sub-directories rather than sub-domains when possible. Sub-domains do not share link love from the main domain as it is treated as a different domain.
14. Research the target audience and aim the site content appropriately.
15. Keep the content up to date. Visitors don’t like outdated content. Updating the content frequently also attracts the Search engines spiders to index the web pages frequently.