Guidelines for Search Engine Optimization

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Search Engine Optimization is a trick to optimize or improve the volume or quality of traffic to a certain web site. There are two types of SEO. First is the “black hat” SEO where search engine optimizers’ main goal is to achieve high rankings in the search engines through any possible means, even in an unethical manner. Optimizers breaks search engine rules and regulations, and unethically presents contents in a different visual or non-visual way to search engine spiders and users. The second type is the “white hat” SEO, where the usage of SEO strategies, techniques and tactics focuses on human audience opposed to search engines. This type is also called the Ethical SEO because it completely follows search engine rules and policies. Both types’ primary goals are to increase the visibility of your website, to gain high rankings and for internet marketing.

Here are some guidelines to achieve the primary goals of Search Engine Optimization.


1. Clear Hierarchy and Text Links.

Webmasters should make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Each page of your site should be reachable from at least one static text link. In giving very informational heading tags, the bots will see the hierarchy of the page. This is very important for your site to be very visible to bots. Webmasters should choose the right text to be used as links in each page and should put relevant Tag for clear hierarchy.

2. Site Map.

Create a site map for your users. A site map lets the search engine know that the pages that might not be discovered through spiders exist. The site map must have links that points to the important parts of your site. If you have a large website with so many links, you can break the site map up into many pages.

3. Useful and Information-rich content.

Having a solid content would entice more the users to continue reading and browsing through your site. Therefore it is very important for your site to be full of useful, clear and accurate information about your topic. Your content should be original and should make sense. Throw relevant keywords in your content, and have it updated once in a while. Besides, it is what your users are really looking for.

4. Keywords.

Don’t use words that are too generic since it would be very hard for you to optimize for them. Try to pick keywords that are specific; words that users would usually type when searching. You make sure that these words are found in your article or blog. Research your keywords and know which of these are most possibly going to be searched by most users.

5. Use texts instead of images in displaying important names, contents, or links.

Search engines don’t recognize images. So instead of displaying names or contents through images, it is advised to have it displayed through text. And if you need to use images for your content, try using the “ALT” attribute, where you can include some words that would describe that image.

6. Descriptive and accurate Title elements and ALT attributes.

You should make sure that what you wrote in the TITLE Elements and ALT attributes should be descriptive of the content of your site. What you write in the title element and the alt attributes will be used by search engine to find the articles related with the user’s given keywords. Feel free too to make bold the texts that are important since bots will tend to give value on bold texts.

7. Check for broken links and correct HTML.

The spiders will stop the search if they find broken links in your site. Check your site thoroughly for broken links in order for the bots to have something to crawl through. You should also create a proper 404 page in case the search engine gives the visitor an old URL. Include in it the appropriate link in the error page for the visitor to know where to go.