Boost Your Traffic - 32 Most Important SEO Tips

Following these simple tips will definitely boost your traffic and search engine rankings for free.

1. Make sure your site is not under construction or incomplete with little or no unique content.

2. When your site is ready, submit it to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com. Consider also submittíng to other search engines but most of them are powered by these four leading search engines. Also submít your site to reputable high PR web directories, open directories, yellow pages and social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, furl, etc. 

 

3. Submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.com (sitemap for search engines usually in XML format)

4. Offer a sitemap to your site visitors for easy page navigation. (sitemap for visitors in HTML format)

5. Create unique and rich content sites. Avoid duplicate content. Do not create multiple pages, sub-domains, domains, mirror sites or sites with different domain names but the same content.

6. Check your keywords and make sure they are relevant and actually are contained in your site. Avoid keyword stuffing.

7. Use text instead of images in your content, links and important subjects.

8. Make your TITLE and ALT tags descriptive, simple and keyword rich. Avoid irrelevant and repeated keywords.

9. Your Title tag should be 60-80 characters maximum length.

10. Your Meta tag description should be 160-180 characters, including spaces. (about 25-30 words)

11. The keywords Meta Tag must be 15-20 words maximum.

12. Optimize pages with Headings (H1, H2, H3..) containing your site's primary keywords.

13. Validate your CSS and HTML. Check for errors and broken links.

14. If your site contains dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), make sure you use SEO friendly URLs. Search engine spiders have difficulty indexing dynamic pages.

15. Maximum links per page must be fewer than 100. Avoid the risk of being flagged as a link farm by search engines.

16. Use Lynx as text browser to check your site.

17. Allow search bots (good ones) to crawl your sites without session IDs or arguments that track their path through the site.

18. Check your web server/host if it supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. It tells search engines whether your content has changed since your site was last crawled. It will save you bandwidth, resources and avoid server overload.

19. Use a Robots.txt file to manage and control search engine spiders that index your site. You can allow and disallow spiders and choose directories you want to be crawled and indexed. With bad bots or spam bots you need to modify your HTACCESS file to properly and effectively manage bots or spiders. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html to learn more about the Robots.txt file.

20. Do not attempt to present different content to search engines than what you show to your site visitors.

21. Avoid dirty tricks and exploiting loop holes to improve search engine ranking.

22. Avoid links to bad neighborhoods such as web spammer, link farm, phishing, hacker, crack, gambling, pörn and scam sites. Linking to them will greatly affect your search engine rankings.

23. Do not attempt to join in link schemes, excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging and link exchange web rings.

24. Do not use unauthorized programs or online tools to submit your site, check page rankings or perform other automated queries. Avoid the risk of being flagged as a spammer.

25. Do not use hidden text and links. Show the search engines what you show to your vistors. It will greatly affect your site's reputation.

26. Do not attempt to create pages that contain phishing, scam, virus, trojan, backdoor, spyware, adware or other malicious programs.

27. Make your site useful and informative.

28. Improve your link building. Link to high PR websites. Quality of relevant links is far more important than quantity. Links will greatly improve your site's visibility, popularity and ranking. Search engines consider links as votes to your site.

29. Check your page link structure. Every page should be reachable by a single static text link.

30. Be extra careful in purchasing SEO services. Some use illegal and questionable methods to improve rankings.

31. Do not buy or sell links.

32. Do not create sites that contain purely affiliate links and no valuable content that is useful to users.

I hope these tips will add more popularity and visibility to your site. Enjoy!

Make the most of peer networking

Keeping the creative juices flowing is vital if you want to improve and develop your business profile. According to the Financial Times, social networking technologies play an essential role in making this happen.

Social networking is a current buzz phrase in the business world. Put simply, it's the practice of expanding the number of your business contacts by making connections through the online world using tools like Facebook, MySpace, and more.

The reason online networks have the competitive edge over traditional media is that they are constantly evolving. They are easily accessible, too, and make both customers and people in business feel involved¬ something that could barely have been imagined just a decade ago. This means small- and medium-sized businesses have a great opportunity to promote themselves in an engaging way, tailoring what they say to their potential customers.

It's all about building a deeper relationship to foster loyalty. 'Us and them' is out of the window: nowadays, it's all about 'we' and having conversations between peers. And it's easy to do - it's just a matter of doing your research and seeing what's out there.

For instance, can you strike a better deal with a new supplier on BT Tradespace? Many offer exclusive deals for fellow members. Or could you offer a more competitive deal for a fellow trader? You could also exchange mutual recommendations between yourself, your peers and suppliers, and your customers, all increasing your traffic, building your trustworthiness (don't recommend them until you've seen how they operate), and establishing your name. It can be a veritable love-in!

Always be careful how you come across. Of course you need to set out your stall but it's important to strike the balance between selling your services effectively and swamping people with sales messages. Blatant commercial messaging doesn't have the editorial value or interest that your customers will expect from your site and/or blog. Think about how annoying pop-ups are and you'll know that banging people over the head with your business proposition will almost certainly backfire. What will be appreciated, however, is the sharing of advice, good and bad business experiences and the latest news from your particular field. Think informal but professional and you'll have nailed it.

The other major opportunity that social networking offers is the chance to listen. Whether it's your customers telling you they'd like you to hone your product, a supplier suggesting new ways to increase productivity, or a peer who sees a flaw in your offering, take notice of what people say and act accordingly. Bigger businesses would kill to have this chance ¬ they often spend hundreds of thousands running focus groups to research their products.

You can get fresh reaction for free. What's more, capitalise on the enthusiasm of others for your product or area of expertise and you'll start to get increased hits and interest.

Sharing can truly be mutually rewarding in the commercial as well as social field. Everyone likes to be heard and, even better, to see their ideas and comments acted upon. React quickly, share your network and you soon see how beneficial social networking can be.

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