Twelve Tips for Optimizing Your Site for Search Engines

By Dorian Benkoil,
for I, Reporter

“Search engine optimization” - the phrase sounds daunting, highly technical or possibly expensive to implement. But there’s good news for even solo citizen journalists who want to improve how their sites are found through search engines like Google: Your own homegrown search engine optimization can get you many of the benefits of a professional retooling.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, just means making your site as easy to find and highly ranked as possible by search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com. That way, people using those engines to look for relevant content can find what you have to offer.  That’s increasingly important as more and more visitors find their way to sites like yours not by typing in your Web address, but by plugging a few choice words into their favorite search engine.

With a little attention up front and some maintenance work over time, pages from your site will start to show up in the first three pages of search engine results, and maybe even onto the first page (the proverbial brass ring).

Here are some easy steps you can take on your own.  Don’t worry that some of these tips refer to technical-sounding things like HTML (hypertext markup language, what Web pages are made of) or require a little bit of coding. It’s really not very technical, and it’s definitely not hard. We’ll walk you through what you need to know, and if you still want more, you can easily look up more - using search.

Jump to sections:

1. Focus on people, not search engines7. Link in, link out: Offer feeds, be social
2. Keep the content coming - for free8. Blog!
3. Code is your friend9. Check, and check again
4. Consistent structure and navigation10. Don’t try to trick the search engines
5. Collect content (yours and others’)11. Don’t go overboard to get search results
6. Use keywords and meta tags (but don’t overuse them)12. Use other resources

 
 

NEXT: 1. Focus on people, not search engines

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Comments

Thanks for the great post and it’s right on the mark. This year at pubcon I really got a feel for whats coming in 2009 regarding search. It seems as though there is a good chance seo as we know it is going to change drastically as factors other than linking and keyword density are going to weigh more heavily. Most notably from what I heard and saw, localized results and search history are going to play a major role. This could effectively negate spam and splogs based solely on link building for seo. So the content is king approach IS going to win out eventually.

Comment from One Way Link Building Software Review at 5:32 pm on 11/21/08

Some great information as a beginer im learning on a slow curve bbut im enjoying every step along the way and this site is one of the best resources ive found .

Comment from Rob at 6:26 pm on 2/18/09

Hi Dorian, These techniques are really very useful. I think these tips are sufficient for promoting our site to various search engines.

Comment from Aiden Thomas at 3:09 am on 4/27/09

SEO is not an easy thing when you work in competitive niche.

Comment from Max at 3:23 pm on 5/09/09

Wordpress in particular is very customizable and has some great SEO plugins for optimizing your blog.

Comment from Ben Adams at 7:55 pm on 8/13/09