Guys,

Apart from the obvious:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

does anyone have any cool tips/links for making a website more SEO aware


Thanks

Much appreciated!!

Pali

Hi,

I know google doesn't use it, but others do, but a keywords and description meta tag is good.

And see if you can get mentioned by other related sites as this will increase your page rank on google, and make it easier for other engines to find you.

Lots of text and descriptions is good too.

HTH B

I don't know where to start ....

A lot of good original content, lots of links in and out (but NOT link farms) and a site that's regularly updated.  Good page names and titles. ALT tags with the images so that they can be indexed too. Good HTML.

You'll notice that I'm avoiding all the "tricks". Don't try to include every word possible on your page.  Don't try to "feed" Google with different text to that which the visitor will see.  Don't go for "white on white".   What I'm suggesting is in the spirit of what Google wants; play the tricks and you may get  a temporarily improved ranking.   But, yes, it largely comes down to hard work and preseverance.

Some other ideas.  

When you remove a URL, don't just get rid of the page and let it "404" but rather include a page to say the old one has been replaced, and have it automatically refresh there a few seconds later.  Great for people who want to find the page after you've removed it as they're taken on to the replacement, and so is Google next time it comes around.

If anyone calls up a web page that doesn't exist (error 404), feed their request to a scriopt and see if you can resolve the page for them, also logging the referer so that you can find the common problems.

You might like to use http rewrites to produce a whole family of pages from a single script (but make sure you don't simply make the a whole page that has many names!).

Where you add a link from page "a" to page "b", how about adding a link back from "b" to "a" too? We've automated this in many areas of our site as it helps people and search engines too find related information.

Use a forum such as this to add content ... and you'll be able to use PHP, Perl, Python or similar to archiove the pages from time to time into HTML pages.   Similarly for a diary / update / newsletter / blog.

All of which is a lot of work, I know.   It's rather like staring a massive oil tanker ... it takes an age and you wonder if it's really happening, but it is, and these things grow along.

Pali, if you wanted to drop by for an hour or two one evening or weekend, we'd be delighted to see you and show you / talk you through some of these ideas.  We're using most of them (and some others that I've probably forgotten in this quick answer). Do arrange ahead though - I've already been here, there and everywhere this year!

Thanks for the replies guys!

Graham, I'll take you up on your kind offer soon and give you a call, if you don't mind!



on 03/02/05 at 13:17:46, Pali wrote:

Graham, I'll take you up on your kind offer soon and give you a call, if you don't mind!

Yep, that's great. There's an outline of my schedule up on our wiki if you want to get an idea when I'm around ...

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