Jun 12, 2009

Twelve Simple SEO Basics (Part 3)

Gary Eckstein Search Engine Optimization 2 Australia, dmoz, google, internet directories, meta tag, meta tags, mybloglog, open directory project, reddit, robots, search bots, Search Engine Optimization, search engine optimization tips, search engines, seo, social networking, Sydney

In parts one and two of the dozen simple and effective SEO essentials the following Search Engine Optimization tips were described; fresh Content, text styles and formatting, descriptive URLs, sites linking to your webpages, Sitemap.XML, Robots.txt, Meta Tags and validating HTML. In the final part, the following are illustrated; Social Networking SEO, DMOZ, page load speeds and unreadable content.

Social Networking

Twitter, Mixx, Digg, Reddit and the other social media and bookmarking sites offer SEO benefits in multiple ways. Not only may delicious.com, Mybloglog or any of the others send visitors your way but the search engines also index those sites and take note of how many people have bookmarked, shared or votes for your page.

It is worth submitting your pages to various Social Bookmarking and Social Sharing sites and also to encourage your visitors to engage these sites. Including a sharing/bookmarking button such as Te!!-a-Friend, ShareThis or AddThis to your pages is a good start.

DMOZ – The Open Directory Project

Having your site listed on dmoz.org is essential. DMOZ is the ‘grand daddy’ of Internet Directories and provides multiple advantages:

1. Having a listing on DMOZ creates a valuable link to your site.
2. DMOZ is human edited and categorizes Websites. Search Engines hold the information contained by DMOZ in high regard and the DMOZ information assists Search Engines in understanding what your site is about.
3. The description contained by DMOZ is still used by some search engines occasionally when there is not a ‘description’ meta tag on your pages.

Submitting your information to DMOZ is simple however can take a few months to appear on the site.

Page Load Speed

The time it takes for your page to load is important for viewers of your Website as well as search engines. People don’t like to wait and neither do search bots. Google, for example, provides information as to access times of Web pages which indicates that they do take notice of this measure. Pingdom provide a great free online page loading time tool.

There are various steps which may be taken to improve page load times with some of the basics being; use fewer and/or smaller size images, place javascript just before the final </body> tag  and use well formed HTML.

iFrame and other Unreadable Content

Some content cannot be indexed by search bots or doesn’t get indexed as it is seen by people. Text and content in iFrames for example do not get indexed by Search Engines and text stored as images is not seen as text by search engines. Use good old fashioned text wherever possible as search engines are quite happy with plain text.

The three articles that have described the list of twelve SEO essentials have included the following topics; fresh content, text styles and formatting, descriptive URLs, sites linking to your webpages, Sitemap.XML, Robots.txt, Meta Tags, validating HTML, Social Networking SEO, DMOZ, page load speeds and unreadable content.

Implement these basic SEO tips and where your pages appear in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is sure to improve.