SEO "Do's"

Apart from our ideas about onsite and offsite factors (especially backlinks) for promoting a site in the search engines, we've put together a few "tips" too. These are an overview, and you can ask and discuss the details in our SEO forum.

Keywords
Do choose keywords carefully and objectively. Too many people target non-relevant target keywords eg "Britney Spears" that will bring massive traffic to their site selling printer cartridges.

The longer the keyword phrase, the easier it will be to get to the #1 spot in a search engine. However, there will be less traffic for longer keyword phrases. Use online tools such as Overture and Wordtracker to determine how many people are searching for a given phrase. These online tools will also give you alternatives to help you be more creative in selecting keywords.

For example: (Word Tracker Data)

Clearly it will be easier to rank for "Britney Spears baby picture", but there will be fewer visitors to your site. Often, there's a compromise though, but in any case it's usually better to rank highly for many "low-traffic" keywords, than to rank nowhere for high traffic ones.

Also search engine users who type a longer, specific keyword phrase, are usually more likely to convert into sales eg a targeted phrase "hotels in Florida" will bring more traffic, but fewer sales than "hotels in Florida with a sauna".

Web Site Content
Do keep adding fresh, relevant content. You should add new pages as often as you can. Fresh, relevant content added on a daily basis would be the ideal.

Webserver Statistics
Do look at your server logs for search engine referrals. These can be found on your web site, and you read the FAQ produced by your web hosting company. Most website hosting plans have web site statistics software as part of your CPANEL.

If you can't find them, ask your support team. If they're not available Use web statistics software such as AWStats to see how people arrive at your site from the search engines, ie which search engine they used, and the keyword phrase they entered to arrive at your site.

Check the visits or referrals regularly, at least once a week. Maybe you will see that you are getting lots of visits for the phrase "Blue widget repair service" and you can focus your efforts on that part of your website.

Other statistics include how ling visitors stayed on your site and how many pages they visited. If visitors are staying a few seconds to look at your homepage, then leaving - then clearly there's a problem with your site!

Other useful web statistics include website errors caused by broken links, or missing pages. There's a goldmine of information in your server logs; make sure you check them regularly.