Search Engine Optimization

Browsing through Yahoo! Once I came to know that people highly search for Search engine optimization , better PageRank in Google etc. Infact I too was one of them , I would like to state some common tips I came across for increasing page rank and better listing in Search Engines.

Rich Content

The more the content , more will be the people coming to your site . Suppose a person searches for keyword “Hosting” , and one of your site`s page have the word “Hosting” then your site page gets listed in the search . now if you update content of your site according to the need of the users obviously your page will get more hits . Getting hits inditerectly means that u make money `cause as many people browse through ads to ads . Offer as much as you can to your visitors, this is the only way you can make your visitor come again & again, If you`re site is a mobile information site give the user some free tone`s and mobile software and make a promise to add more later .

Linking

It`s where your site`s existense lies , if you make a page and tell a friend or 2 nothing happens no one will know about your site. Get links to your site from wherever possible, if you have 5 links to your site not only people will come to you from 5 locations , you are making it known to search engine`s as it crawls to your site 5 different locations and you`re indirectly increasing your google pagerank too.

Google PageRank

Better Pagerank means better Hits ,

• Although People go mad for pagerank , You will never know what your true PR is. The toolbar PR is highly inaccurate and is not updated for months , you get different pagerank on different PG checking site`s for the same URL .
• PR is not related to how high your site will rank. Rather, a higher PR will cause Googlebot to dig deeper when deep crawling your site. it is good to have high PR but you don`t have to run for it.
• The best way for a page to achieve high PR is to get linked from high pagerank site`s and forums. Spamming on forum helps a lot , LOL :)

Layout ?

I`ve seen people leave site`s just because it`s not good at eye . not everyone looks for content, some may be browsing just for fun but still you can`t afford to miss them. Some users even have a feeling that only people with good content can come up with a cool site . And I do suggest you to have a joke page or some light / sweet content on you site.

PHP and Google

Google hate`s php ? Can`t say … but google does not list php files of every site . That is If you have a url ending with blah.php?topic=1&view=23 then google will only list the one blah.php file . SO you need to make it a HTML page or user mod rewrite in CMS.

• Mod Rewrite is something that is done to make .php extention files show as .html extention before it is shown to user . It is popular among CMS like PHPnuke, Drupal , Mambo etc. It can be done for our own PHP pages too, all we have to do is edit .htaccess file to make it that way.

Hosting & Domains

Always host from a Reliable host , which has a good custumer service and the one which you have access anytime (`cause you don`t know when you need them) . Check if it has ebough speed and no downtime . Downtime can lead your site to heavy loss as it might be the time a customer comes or the search engine crawls. When you buy domains buy something related to what your going to buy like it`s a bit odd when you have your name in domain and have a hosting site.

Keywords

Keywords are very essential no matter what your website relates to. One can say that it`s all matter of keywords that brings visitors to a website. Usually it`s hard to say what keyword a user might search , but still you guess a bit . There is a Keyword Selector Tool from Overture which tells the highest search realted to the keyword, this tool helps a lot in making a SE friendly website. Another is from Google : Google AdWords Keyword Tool helps you make out possible keywords for your site , it`s actually same as overtures from Yahoo

Precautions

• Never Link to a page which is banned from search engine`s
• Don`t host your pages on a unreliable host. Hence try to get history of a web host before buying space . Check if your host is not banned.
• Never link to a site which host warez, copyrighted materials ,anything that is against the law or which have chance to get banned. Incomming links from them can`t do any harm though.
• Check for errors in metatags like description
• Have a robots.txt file

Few More Tips :

• Make your navigation visible and consistent.
• Use small number of fonts, say 2 to 3 .
• Pictures capture a lot of peoples attention , but mind the images to be low size, It lowers Bandwidth consumption for small sites.
• A layout of your site should easily catch notice, if you are not sure about it try browsing some popular forums and sites.
• Every one has thier own Idea of neat layout, try to get in the minds of majority. Polls sometimes do help.
• Make it a pleasurable experience for the visitor , so that he may come back . It will increase traffic and positive feedback.
• Never Leave a visitor , always have a link to your main page and to some of your good services.
• Spelling mistakes: It is something very important that is usually ignored . Visitors may get impression of a site being casual than professional, even if they don`t mind, Search Engines do and they do lot !
• Advertisments can make you maoney , but the money depends on visitors. usually the people get annoyed at high Ads , put your Ads wisely to integrate into the layout . It should be in such a way that people should get attracted to .
• On Completion of your Website, check it on different popular Web Browsers and Screen Resolutions.