Copyright 2002, John Gergye
Everyone is clamoring for new and improved seo strategies. Not necessary. All you have to do is apply what you learned in kindergarten.
Think I'm kidding? I’m not. Take a look.
Know Your Name and Address - Sounds simple enough, right? But too many sites don't know who they are or what they are trying to be. Instead of focusing on one topic, or theme, they try to be all sorts of things at once and succeed in being nothing to no one. Which certainly isn't a winning seo strategy.
Play Fair - Don't try to fool the search engines with things like invisible text or keyword stuffing. Or try to trap visitors with the disabled back button trick. Try these and you'll likely fail "Plays Well With Others".
Don't Take Things That Aren't Yours - Never grab someone else's content as your own. Don't "borrow" their HTML either. Always do your own work.
Learn Your ABCs - If you can't get the basics right why sweat being double promoted? When it comes to search engines that means having a working knowledge of meta tags, knowing how to target the right keywords, using decent keyword density and understanding themes. Knowing how to create helpful content and write catchy titles that appeal to humans and bots helps too. C'mon now. These are seo strategies anyone can learn.
Stick Together - Links are what makes the web go round. Like holding hands in the hall, it's the glue that lets like minded sites stick together. Get linked.
Don't Cut in Line - AFTER you've built up the count of incoming links, THEN you're ready to get into link focused search engines like Google. Don't try to cut in line. You might get tripped up.
Always Have Something for Show and Tell - Web site optimization starts and ends with content. Fresh content. Quality content. Content that tells visitors what they want to know. Never show up at search engines or directories empty handed relying on flash or graphics with little if any content. That's like saying the "The dog ate my homework (wink, wink) but give me an 'A' anyhow".
When You Color, Stay In the Lines - Take care to code up quality HTML and validate it to make sure it's right. Avoid javascript intensive pages. Tricked out graphics heavy pages don't appeal to search engines much either. But "Plain Jane" ugly ones sure do.
Share - Sharing is a good linking strategy. Especially when first starting out. By that I mean don't be afraid to be the first to link. Networking like this just makes good sense. It's a smart seo strategy. Besides many webmasters run more than one site. Once they see you are polite they just may want to share links with you from all their sites. Now wouldn't that be nifty?
Apply these simple seo strategies and you just might get a gold star or a top search engine ranking - whichever you prefer. And that's what we all want, right?
Are you a search engine whiz or still stuck in search engine kindergarten? Why not take John's Search Engine Quiz and find out? No matter your score, you'll get an email special report that goes over your answers and reveals common mistakes webmasters all too often make. Test your search engine smarts now! http://www.keyword-kibitzer.com/
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