Everyone loves a good tip, right? Here are 55 quick tips for search engine optimization that even your mother could use to get cooking. Well, not my mother, but you get my point. Most folks with some web design and beginner SEO knowledge should be able to take these to the bank without any problem. 
1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.
2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.
3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.
4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.
5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.
6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.
7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.
8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.
9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.
10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.
11. Check for canonicalization issues - www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.
12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.
Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.
13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem - you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.
14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.
15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.
17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.
18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.
19. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.
20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.
21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.
22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.
23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.
24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.
25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.
26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.
27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.
28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.
29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.
30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.
31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.
32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.
33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.
34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.
35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.
36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!
37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.
38. Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.
39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.
40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.
41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:
(1) Log out of Google
(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar
42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.
43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.
44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.
45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.
46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.
47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.
48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.
49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.
50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.
51. Add viral components to your web site or blog - reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.
52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.
53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.
54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.
55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.
Richard V. Burckhardt, also known as The Web Optimist, is an SEO trainer based in Palm Springs, CA with over 10 years experience in search engine optimization, web development and marketing.
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Comments
53 responses so far ↓
Search Engine Optimization Journal on Apr 23, 2008 at 9:23 am
Great tips! Love the pic of the Mom to please!
David on Apr 23, 2008 at 9:44 am
Great stuff, very good refresher…simple question about tip #20, how can I know if my server is on any kind of blacklist?
Richard Burckhardt on Apr 23, 2008 at 9:51 am
Run a search in Google for “check server domain blacklist” and you’ll find lots of services to help you with this.
Samirb on Apr 23, 2008 at 9:58 am
Wow, huge compilation of tips! Good stuff, I agree the mom picture is awesome!
Ivo on Apr 23, 2008 at 11:33 am
Good work, can I translate these tips to Czech language? With link to this article naturally.
Richard V. Burckhardt on Apr 23, 2008 at 11:36 am
I have no objection, but it’s up to Search Engine Journal since it’s an exclusive to this blog.
Loren?
Eduard Blacquière on Apr 23, 2008 at 11:52 am
A nice and complete list to check once in a while!
Rebecca on Apr 23, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Great list! I’d take a little exception to #5, though, if you care about local search. Local folks will indeed search for your company name — if they don’t, you need more than just SEO.
Brian Harnish on Apr 23, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Mr. Burckhardt: Excellent list! I thought it was very comprehensive, and can’t think of much else to add. I thought of something regarding tip #9 though: if Flash absolutely must be used, locational Flash (a single Flash file vs. a full Flash site) would be better than a Flash site due to the fact that the Flash file can be moved around the page and the content added in front of it, making it much easier for search engines to read the important part of the page: its content.
Chris Hooley on Apr 23, 2008 at 4:07 pm
nice list, but you forgot “get bloggers and SEOs hammered at conferences” it seems to work!
Richard Burckhardt on Apr 23, 2008 at 4:10 pm
I’m adding that one to my next list! How could I have forgotten?
Thanks,
Richard
Internet Marketing Joy on Apr 23, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Although this list has great tips on how to do quick SEO..I’m afraid my mom is a bit newbie, too newbie for some of the terms mentioned..^^..but nevertheless, these are great SEO tips!
Thanks for sharing it with us!
Icheb on Apr 23, 2008 at 5:33 pm
“Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm.”
Why don’t you tell the truth and just tell people that PR is USELESS? Go and get a high PR site by spamming a million guestbooks, maybe then you’ll get it.
“Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.”
Really, three times at least? Is this part of the algorithm now? So if I only write an article every two weeks the search engines will hate me?
“Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.”
Yeah, the owner wants privacy, so he HAS to be a spammer.
“Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines.”
There is no fucking reason why a .edu would get preferred treatment. They simply get more authority BECAUSE THEY GET LINKED TO MORE OFTEN.
“Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages.”
Sure, get your RSS feed indexed and you’re just BEGGING for duplicate content issues.
“Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.”
PR tells you how many links a page has, NOTHING ELSE. This means it is USELESS.
“If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.”
You combat duplicate content issues by ELIMINATING the other page, NOT by highlighting the preferred page.
If you really have “10 years of experience” with SEO, you are a moron.
Mark Alves on Apr 23, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Great tips. For step #41, there’s an additional way to turn off Google personalization: get the plug-in from Joost de Valk
http://www.joostdevalk.nl/seo-tools/disable-personalized-search-plugin/
Mery on Apr 23, 2008 at 11:36 pm
You made a excellent List! I feel you could also add this point,
“Register Your Domain for Several Years”
This will help you to protect your brand and identity and also gives a positive sign to Search Engines that you are serious about your web site and can improve your Pagerank(Google’s)
Arnie on Apr 24, 2008 at 12:36 am
Hey a nice mini-SEO book. Way to go!
Jaan Kanellis on Apr 24, 2008 at 12:45 am
Very nice list Richard! I especially like #34.
james on Apr 24, 2008 at 12:56 am
my 2 cents.
Create sitemap.xml file containing all the links in the website.
create robot.txt file , this can help the spiders to crawl , and you can specify in this file, the pages for not crawling also
miguel on Apr 24, 2008 at 5:06 am
interesante
Icheb2 on Apr 24, 2008 at 7:20 am
Aww Richard, don’t have the guts to publish my comment? Can’t stand it when people disagree with you?
Flora on Apr 24, 2008 at 7:31 am
Great and Useful checklist.
Richard Burckhardt on Apr 24, 2008 at 9:34 am
icheb2 -
Sorry, I am told your comment got caught in the spam filter. It’s live now.
Yes, after over ten years of optimizing sites, I am fully aware that if you put two SEOs in a room, there’s going to be disagreement.
And, yes, we disagree.
Web Success Diva on Apr 24, 2008 at 2:20 pm
This is absolutely perfect and so many ideas that I hadn’t even thought of. Great post, definitely sharing with my readers!
Thanks!
Maria Reyes-McDavis
Raj on Apr 25, 2008 at 9:32 am
Thanks for the all the tips Richard. Quick question, you mentioned that if i want my site to be crawled more frequently to have other quality sites link to it… do blogs count? (for example, if at the end of this blog of mine i was to enter my website link, or when i blog on others sites, or googles blog)?
One other question, when you say that i should have a blog on my site (abcd.com), does having a link on my site to a blog site where i blog about abcd.com count?
Richard Burckhardt on Apr 25, 2008 at 9:48 am
yea,good article
Richard Burckhardt on Apr 25, 2008 at 10:03 am
OK, I didn’t post the previous comment about “yea, good article.” I have no idea who did.
To answer the questions from Raj, certainly links from good, quality blogs count.
And, yes, links between your site and a blog you are posting to (I’m assuming you’ve got something like a hosted blog) can count, but nothing beats having your own blog where you contribute quality content and link bait for YOUR site.
Raj on Apr 25, 2008 at 10:47 am
Thank you Richard, how would I go about setting up my own blog on my own site? thanks in advance.
Richard Burckhardt on Apr 25, 2008 at 10:57 am
Check with your hosting company first and see if they have blog software that can be activated for your account. Many hosts offer blogs along with scripts and so forth these days, pre-installed. Otherwise, I’m a big fan of WordPress. It’s free and there are a zillion plugins and themes that are SEO friendly. Download it from WordPress.org and install it.
Markus Nelson on Apr 25, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Great little checklist of stuff - I could not have done it better myself - and learned a thing or two thank you..
Markus Nelson
Paul on Apr 25, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Nice article. Though there are many SEO resources online, it seems that there are few lists such as this. I would like to mention that through the use of swfObject and swfAddress alternate content can be provided for Flash content that is search engine accessible. Smart use of XSLT can allow the same content to populate both the flash and the HTML content seen by spiders.
SEO Agency on Apr 26, 2008 at 12:12 am
Great SEO tips provided here. We like to tell our clients that an effective SEO campaign is a process and not a destination. Proper SEO must be completed on a site daily. Great placement goes to companies who do something each day.
Hey Paul, I found your previous comment interesting. We run across flash sites from time to time that need site optimization. Shoot us an email. Perhaps we can work with you when we run across a flash site or a flash landing page. Look forward to hearing from you.
Richard Burckhardt on Apr 26, 2008 at 12:51 am
Thanks. Yes, I’d like to learn more about Paul’s technique, too. I’ve read about it some, but it’s beyond the scope of this post, which is about simplicity.
How about a post about your Flash SEO ideas?
Jarrod on Apr 26, 2008 at 3:32 am
Good stuff, thanks.
Jeanette on Apr 26, 2008 at 10:03 am
This is so funny, I searched for “check server domain blacklist” and all I got was this page!
-Icheb, where’s your SEO list? Why anonymous?
Joy~
Jeanette
BeyondRandom on Apr 26, 2008 at 10:11 am
Great Tips! Thanks Alot…Im gonna have to add this to my bookmarks
Richard V. Burckhardt on Apr 26, 2008 at 10:14 am
Run the search for “check server domain blacklist” WITHOUT the quotes. You’ll get a ton of resources.
;-)
And, (shameless plug), if you haven’t done so yet, feel free to Sphinn this article and bookmark it in delicious, etc.
Thanks to all. i really appreciate the comments and feedback!
Malte Landwehr on Apr 28, 2008 at 11:05 am
Good you reminded my of having splash pages with flash and big images only. I will retrofit all my websites with some of those!
And by the way, link baiting is not just about good content, its about presenting and promoting the content.
Jarrod on Apr 29, 2008 at 1:51 am
Nice work, its great to see some real advice offered instead of the usual regurgitated stuff over and over.
JJMcClure on Apr 29, 2008 at 9:59 am
I posted your list on the Sitepoint SEO forum, crediting you as the author, naming the source and providing a link back to the original page that this was on, do you have any objection to that?
Richard Burckhardt on Apr 29, 2008 at 10:05 am
I don’t. Thanks! Maybe we can get a few more Sphinns!
;-)
TonyS on Apr 30, 2008 at 2:07 pm
For blacklisting searches among other things, I use http://www.mxtoolbox.com.
Thomas on May 3, 2008 at 3:38 am
Thanks a lot for the tipps:
“20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.”
==> how can i make a blacklist check?
Thanks for your answer
Wagner on May 8, 2008 at 7:11 pm
This is an other list of SEO-Tips , but in german:
http://www.shophexe.de/forum/Allgemeine-Regeln-Richtlinien-SEO-wichtige-Webcrawler-
How To DO SEO on May 13, 2008 at 4:39 am
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and this technique is used to promote the websites on the internet.
Caesar on May 18, 2008 at 12:33 am
Thanks for the great tips. I am confused with #41(2) Append &pws=0. Can someone explain please.
Dan on May 18, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Excellent tips. Thanks.
Gidseo on May 28, 2008 at 2:50 pm
It took me longer to get here but I think this wins over John Carcutt’s post!
Markus from Italy on Jun 4, 2008 at 7:59 am
Very very good tips, complete and upgrade, simple and not too generally.
Jegastar on Jun 16, 2008 at 12:49 am
Tips are very good. I have applied all the tips on my site also. Nothing is newer than these points for SEO. Thanks so much for all tips.
— Jegastar.
Zeabtle on Jun 17, 2008 at 7:48 am
Nice tips. I will do it to my site. Thank you.
SHELBY WALLACE on Jun 18, 2008 at 10:28 pm
This is valuable SEO information. I am really going to start applying these tools and see how much it improves my search engine listsings and site traffic. Thank you very much.
Tom Munson on Jun 28, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Thanks for all the tips, Ive been using most but I did learn a few more. Thanks again.
Arul on Jul 1, 2008 at 8:14 am
Great Presentation Mr. Richard Burckhardt. Everything in a step by step procedure. I am going to compare your presentation with other SEO resources and will get the better informations from the comparison. The result might get more information from your presentation, i think.
Thank you a lot.
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