Website Design Tips - Hypergurl

Free SEO search engine optimization tips

It wasn't so long ago that search engine optimization meant placing meta tags on your webpage then submitting your site to directories such as Yahoo or MSN. Over the next few weeks your website would have been checked over manually by a human and added to the appropriate directory.

Then along came search engines such as Google who relied on programming algorithms to list websites for specific keywords that suit the content of the site. At first the algorithms were based on meta keywords, title and description tags. Over the years webmasters learnt how to spam meta tags for the highest listing possible. This resulted in websites being listed for high traffic keywords such as Brittany Spears or Webhosting when in fact their content had nothing to do with those themes. Spammy webmasters figured the high traffic resulted in their sites being seen at least, even if the visitor was after something totally different. Of course this wasn't good for the Internet in general, or for Google search which is the reason why they are constantly updating their algorithm. But what do these updates mean for webmasters?

Is it harder nowadays to be listed on search engines?

This depends on what your view of hard is. For example, if in the past you relied on meta tags alone to keep good search engine listings, then yes it is now much harder than that. I also question the effectiveness nowadays of SEO services where you simply pay a fee for them to optimize your webpages for them to gain highest possible search engine listings. I question it because search engine optimization in todays terms, is much more than internal changes made to each webpage. It doesnt matter how good your meta tags are if your website content is considered duplicate content or if no other site links back to you.

So what does it take nowadays to get a website listed on a search engine?

Listed below are Free SEO tips to help you optimize your website for good search results.

1. First and foremost you need to ensure your website isn't considered duplicate content.

In Google's words:

Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.

Google's official webmaster blog has a great article explaining duplicate content from a search engines perspective.

This doesn't mean you can't have a website about holidays for instance, because there are already thousands of similar themed sites on the web. You just need to have a hard serious look at your website and ask yourself what does it offer that other holiday websites don't? Why would someone find your site more useful than those already listed in the top 10 of Google search?

If you created a website with original content and didn't copy and paste from another site, then your off to a good start and have nothing to worry about.

2. It's also important to use Google's Webmaster Guidelines to check that the quality of your overall website design is compatible with their search engine spiders.

Basically what Google has done is said "Look, here is what we consider a good website design that we would be glad to list in our search engine results. Anything else could be considered low quality, in which case you may not be listed at all."

Quick Run Down On Quality Guidelines

• Make sure every page can be got to from at least one static text link.
• If any webpage has more than 100 links break it into multiple pages.
• Use text instead of images to display important content and links. For example navigation menus.
• Make sure meta tags are are descriptive and accurate.
• Check for broken links and correct HTML. Xenu is a free program you can download to help you check your website for broken links.

They also go on to explain what not to do when designing your website. For example don't use hidden text, doorway pages or multiple webpages with the same content.

You might find Feedthebot.com more helpful in explaining Google's Webmaster Guidelines as they explain them in more detail.

3. View your website in a text browser like Lynx. Why? Because search engine spiders view your website as text only and not graphical. If you can navigate your whole website using a text browser, then chances are search engine spiders can as well.

So far you should have checked that your content is original and that your website design is compatible and reachable for search engine spiders to list in their results. The next step is to work on getting links back to your website from others.

4. Constantly work on getting quality links back to your website.

Having people link to your website is a well known and important factor in getting your site listed in the search engines. Matt Cutts, the head of the Google's Webspam team, talks about reciprocal text links often in his blog.

Each link is seen as a form of vote for your site. Furthermore, if the links are to count for search engine listings they also have to be relevant. For example, one website about cars linking to another site about cars, counts for more than if the link was from a flower website.

How do you find out what websites are linking to you?

The easiest way to check what sites are linking back to yours is to do a quick search on yahoo.com for: linkdomain:www.yourwebsite.com

Note: Change where I've typed yourwebsite.com to your websites URL address.

More information on how to get your website listed on search engines

Gareth Davies from GSINC has published a variety of free seo beginner videos including the one shown below.

Discover what title tags are in this Seo tutorial, why they are important and how to create them.

To start this video tutorial press the go arrow.