My Guide to SEO and Success

This is a guide I worked out myself from what I have observed and learned in the field of SEO.

It was originally posted by me on Digital Point SEO Forums and has been updated since then.

Keyword Research

Work out the best keywords to target based on relevance and KEI for each webpage on the site (or as many as possible).
Limit the KWs to target of each page to 1 or 2 one phrase.
To keep track of which keywords the pages has to target put them in the Meta KW tag, a very good tag to keep track of this, hehe.

On-Page Optimization

Domain name: Get the most important KW in the domain name. Don’t make it look spammy, if the visitor feels it spammy, Google for sure also thinks so.
Title: Try to make variations of the KW. Don’t repeat the same word more than 2 times and not after each other. Keep company name in the end of the title if branding is needed.
Internal navigation: Each web page HAS to be reachable within two clicks (if not a site based on a db). If not with navigation structure then with a sitemap. Isolate if any webpages are more important than others and if so, get more links to it. For example if the homepage is very important make a link to it from each page - both for the visitors and for the SEs. Avoid navigation with flash or some complex js - but if you HAVE to keep it then have a normal HTML navigation on the bottom of the page.
Use H1 and H2 tags with KWs in them and define them in the CSS file. Use the headings in a sensible and logical way to avoid possible filters.
Meta desc: KW in the beginning, action for the visitor in the end.
KW rich text starts early in the source: Use CSS-P for this and get the CSS and JS in external files.
Page contains a lot of text: You should strive for to keep your web pages at least 250 words each.
Use the Title attribute in the anchor tags.
Use ALT description tags on the images.
Use the strong tag if possible to emphasize KWs.
Spread out the KWs in the body text. Avoid a too high density, if it feels a bit spammy, reduce it. You write for the visitors not the SEs.
In case you have any tables use the summary attribute.
Use XHTML and put all design in the external CSS file to reduce the file sizes and make it “easier” for the spiders to see the content.
Avoid frames and flash based site.
Avoid poison words in the title, headings, file name and other important places.
Use static URLs. If you use a db get it mod_rewritten.
Use dashes in the URLs. Confirmed by my own SEO test as well as on the Google blog by GG as well as Matt Cutts.
Keep your files under 100K. (spiders may disregard additional)
If needed break up words in the source so they form keywords by using “word-spacing:-4px” with CSS.
Have your content change/updated on a regular basis so the spiders will come more often. If this is not done manually you can rotate/randomize text with PHP. This maybe also will rank you higher.
Avoid ANY kind of bad hat SEO or anything could mistakenly be seen as bad hat. This includes doorways, non-301 redirects, hidden texts or links, spamming, mirror domains, cloaking etc.
Validate the code by W3C so you make it easier for the SE spiders.
Never link to any site that could be seen as a bad site.
Use 301 to get the PR on one version of the domain name (confirmed by GG on WMW and by Matt Cutts on his blog)
If you have any link to an unimportant page let say copyright terms on each page use the rel=nofollow so that you distribute the PR more to your other pages than that one.

Off-Page Optimization

Get links from high PR pages to your site. Try to have them related in the same theme. Avoid excessive reciprocal linking, it could be penalized - three way linking is better.
Avoid temporary links to your site, the older they are the better.
Get your KWs in the anchor text of the links to your site.
Avoid excessive crosslinking.
Whenever you feel that “now I have enough links”, set a new goal to double them.
Good ways to get links: Write and submit high quality articles to article sites, write something unique and useful, get into niche directories (also general once are ok.) But avoid the FFA type in which there is no approval.
Make a Google sitemap and submit it.
Get a reliable host that has more than 99% uptime, is fast and is not hosting bad sites (you don’t want to be in a bad neighbourhood.)
Submit your site to SEs and directories ONLY manually.

Factors in the Long Run

Content is not King. UNIQUE content is King. Huge difference. Write something valuable that has not been written before and you will see what I mean.
Add more unique content on a regular basis. Try to write at least an article or web page with text per week.
Build your web site big. One big good one is much better than 10 small not-so-good ones.
Have good statistics and analyze from where you get your visitors, their paths on your site and finetune it.
Observe: Look and observe all the time. Check the SERPs, check the stats, check this, check that and learn. If something goes good reinforce it, if something was not good remedy it.

Personal Recommendations

If you have a site about information try to specialize it in a certain niche.
Make a SEO friendly directory in your niche of speciality. You will get a huge benefit of this. You can ask or make them sign up for your newsletter when submitting their site. When you send your newsletter make it valuable information and you won’t get any unsubscribers.
Do your research before starting a new site. Look at which sites are already existing, what is needed and wanted and then make one that is the best in a certain field. Like if you find there is 20 similar sites like the one you want to make, figure out how you can make it the best of them.
If you offer services try to always give more than what is expected and you will build up a good reputation.
Find forums in your special field and provide useful information and help people by answering their questions etc. Have your site in the signature and you will see that it will be more known.
In the bodytext concentrate on the visitor and not on yourself.
If you have a site that sells things or services, don’t speak about money the first thing but how you can help the visitor. In addition add pages to the site with valuable information that will drive visitors to the site that maybe is not interested in your services but maybe in some month will be.
The big search engines have million of variables in their algo, don’t try to cheat it. Spend the time writing instead.
Study the SEO field by reading articles and forums to learn more each day and catch the algo changes and follow up with finetuning your site.

Best Personal Advice

Don’t make a web site to make money, make a web site to the benefit and help to your visitors and you will see that the money will come.

43 responses » Leave a comment

jeet said on December 30, 2005 at 6:03 am
That is one of the very best check list I have ever seen.
Thanks for putting it here .
Dakait said on December 30, 2005 at 7:20 am
Great Information.

Best point is your best personal advice.

Any way…a site should be made for visitors and NOT for owners, than only it can help owner.
hyipdaily said on February 3, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Very useful info. Thanks.
Sophia said on February 9, 2006 at 10:49 pm
Hi Jim,
I found your guide very enlightening and for the most part easy to follow. I actually have not read it in its entirety but look forward to doing so. The guide will be a valuable resource for me as I create a presence (hopefully magnetic!) on the internet.

Thanks also for your prompt response to my question.

Regards,
Sophia
arun said on March 8, 2006 at 2:09 pm
Hi,
I have visited your site.This is the great for providing information related to SEO.
Clyde Barry said on March 29, 2006 at 9:59 am
“Try this technique!”

8 magical SEO techniques!|submityourarticlesnow!|

I know most of you will be surprised to read the title of this article. Actually this is what search engine optimization is all about. There are a few points which every search engine optimization engineer should remember. Going through this will not only get you a better SERP’s ranking but also will increase your Google PR.

1. Submit to as many quality directories, article sites and Press Releases as possible like this site http://www.submityourarticlesnow.com . While doing so the most important factor to remember is that all these should have a unique content and anchor text. As this is what I am using for several years successfully and which I am promoting as “The Magician’s Wand SEO Technique”.

2. Many people do submit articles to various sites and think there job is over. But if you really want your article to make headlines, you should make it as unique as possible like the title above which is “8 magical SEO techniques!|submityourarticlesnow|”. So now you know what this technique means.

3. Getting Linkbacks: Most SEO’s think the more the linkbacks the better the PR and SERP’s which is one of the most biggest rumours going around in the world of SEO.

4. Don’t place common anchor text on hundred’s and thousands of sites as these can be identified by Search engines as link spam or a Black hat technique.

5. Avoid Link Farms: Avoid sites which offer thousands of links instantly by placing a folder on your site. This is one of the worst methods of getting linkbacks. While submitting to directories, have a close look at the PR and the quality of the backlink.

6. Make use of all tags in your pages like title, description, keywords, header 1, header 2, alt of images by focusing on 10 main keywords for optimization.

7. Install a sitemap script for your website if it has thousands of pages and set a cron to update it daily if you wish search engine’s to crawl your site regualarly. You can find many such scripts on the internet today.

8. The more your websites content is unique the more chances are that it will rank at the top. So place your website content with some unbelivable words like for example - thought provoking content.
Worlds Biggest Directory said on April 22, 2006 at 1:51 pm
This is one of the best Article i have ever found.I liked the Keyword details given here.
Thanks Jim
goggle said on April 27, 2006 at 7:03 pm
“Content is not King. UNIQUE content is King. Huge difference” — Jim, this is easy said than done.. cuz if you have a wonderful write-up/article it gets cloned so fast all over the net that you just cant say that its unique.. I think only the timestamp can tell the originals from the dupes … but then it all will depend on when google indexed that page..
Jeremy Cobb said on August 17, 2006 at 4:08 pm
I love your advice and comments! this is a horribly overpriced and over paid industry! I have a solutions for those that need more help and that don’t want to spend a lot of money learning this lucretive trade. http://signup.myseoguide.com
pammer said on September 12, 2006 at 10:51 pm
I have a question about “Use XML” in simple frontpage html websites? Could i make “feed” or xml feed for html websites ?

And how much density is better for particular keywords on one page?
Jim Westergren said on September 12, 2006 at 11:01 pm
I have a question about “Use XML” in simple frontpage html websites? Could i make “feed” or xml feed for html websites ?

That was a mistake, I meant XHTML.

And how much density is better for particular keywords on one page?

Density is old thinking. More text is better than high density. And links are more important than on-page.
SEO Tutor said on September 18, 2006 at 3:53 pm
Congrats Jim — nice compilation. I especially liked the last line which is very similar to my own philosophy, paraphrased as…

“Don’t make a web site to make money, make a web site to the benefit (of) your visitors.”

…couldn’t agree more.
Nate said on October 17, 2006 at 7:09 am
This is great information! How up-to-date is it? Are SE’s looking for different things now? I’ve seen lots of comments on Digital Point too and am so interested in the most effective techniques for SEO and SMO. I use and recommend addurl.nu all the time. Thanks!
Jim Westergren said on October 21, 2006 at 9:36 pm
Thanks Nate.

I would say that all these things are still valid. The basics of SEO will never change.

You could also check this guide. It is excellent.

In some future I will revise this post and make it more extensive.
Kris said on November 12, 2006 at 1:47 am
Great source Jim thanks very much !

I have a question for you and would like to know your opinion .

I have 6 relevant sites on the same IP and have another set of 8 sites on another IP all of these relevant category .

I have not cross linked any of them at all as of yet , no links between them whatsoever, I am curious what would you recommend in this case, what is the best way to link these sites ?

I have read lots of people saying not to link sites together on the same IP , a few of them suggests it should not be a problem .
I have a theory why people think it is a bad idea to link them together which is that since in the past people used to link their non-relevant sites together the search engines started penalizing because of the non-relevancy people assumed the problem was the same IP , instead of the real problem which again based on my theory is the non-relevancy .
Let me know what is your take on this,

Kris
Jim Westergren said on November 12, 2006 at 2:41 pm
Kris,

It should not be a problem if not done too much. The best would probably be to have your sites on different c-class IPs and most of them internlinked. I have 70 sites across 33 c-class IPs. Most of my sites link to jimwestergren.com and from this site I link to my main sites on my home page and the whole list on a subpage. 1-2 relevant outging links from your own network to your sites should not be a problem. Avoid footer and try to place the links in the context, that is probably the best.
Harish said on December 7, 2006 at 8:53 am
The right way to lead a newcomers as well as experienced SEOs. I got good start from this valuable instruction.
Best luck for Your Book on SEOs.
Martijn said on January 4, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Thx,

For this helpfull guide!
Web Developers said on January 16, 2007 at 6:19 pm
, make a web site to the benefit and help to your visitors and you will see that the money will come.

One of the best advices you can give to budding webmasters of today.
Beginners Guide to SEO said on February 8, 2007 at 10:13 pm
Thanks, nice guide Jim, I am working in my own website now, relatively new to SEO, but very passionate for it, spent quite some time on the Internet.
DS said on February 23, 2007 at 8:21 pm
This is really helpful for us and for newbies also…
Peter Andersen said on March 24, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Very very relevant information Jim.

I am a danish multimedia design student currently in the process of writing a paper on SEO, and a lot of this info here is incredibly useful for me.

One thing though, you mention the use of keywords a lot. I was under the clear impression that meta-tagged keywords are not at all useful anymore. That they have been deprecated to a point of not having any viable use anymore.

I still do use them of course, but I was just wondering about it. Any thoughts on that matter?

Regards.
Jim Westergren said on March 24, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Peter,

With keywords or KWs is also meant the words or phrases that you target and optimize for higher rankings. It is not related the meta keywords tag.

Let me know if you have other questions.
Peter Andersen said on March 25, 2007 at 1:15 am
Roger that Jim, and thanks a lot for setting that straight
Nathan said on April 27, 2007 at 7:46 am
Don’t make a web site to make money, make a web site to the benefit and help to your visitors and you will see that the money will come.

Nice advice for the people who just think blogs and internet as money making sources and place some useless information in their blogs.
Tolga said on May 14, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Good advie, thanks Jim. I’d like to also see some information on techniques to optimize for Yahoo and MSN. It seems that Yahoo emphasize a lot more on the domain name when doing a particular search.
murtazaaa said on September 16, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Good advie, thanks Jim. I’d like to also see some information on techniques to optimize for Yahoo and MSN. It seems that Yahoo emphasize a lot more on the domain name when doing a particular search.
SEO Book said on October 16, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Excellent advice Jim. I hope we can read a SEO Book written by you one day
toys said on November 2, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Thanks for the great guide and information. I know that a lot of people have been having problems with this for a while. Not a lot of people can use it properly. Most of the people that I know keep making it seem, as you put it, to spammy. I have tried to help them, but I have been failing to get the points across. Then I came across your site and have started sending out the link to everyone that I know. I think that it has been making a difference also in the work that they are doing. Thank you again for the information that you have on your site. You have it in a very precise way and in a way that I have found that seems easy to follow. And from what I have seen, others seem to have found your site to be the same..
Alan said on November 3, 2007 at 8:34 am
It was a great and helpful for me to do seo and succeed. Especially the keyword research, on-page optimization and off-page optimization helped me very much for doing the seo. thank you very much for this very helpful information.
Edie said on December 6, 2007 at 12:45 am
Hello, thank you. Really nice post. I will use your advices!
oil pet portraits said on January 4, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Your final say was really excellent. I hope everyone else who is working on the net will realize that fact. As we all know, most people come to the Internet with a sole idea of making money. They end up making their site super commercialized without even thinking about their visitors.
Guru Naganat said on March 9, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Thanks for all the valuable guidance. I am just new to this territory and I find these very exciting. Some of them are beyond my head but some of them are very easy to do and makes perfect sense.

I think information such as yours are unbiassed and I can learn at my own pace. I have spoken to a few consultants and I find that they are not very organized in their thoughts and are very ‘iffy’ about what they say. Their attitude. “give me the job, we will try and may be you will top the ‘google’ searches”.

Some others say that you have do paid advertising and as people visit your site, you become popular and ‘google’ robot will find you.

Again, thanks
Guru
Chuck McKay said on March 9, 2008 at 10:15 pm
I was told that if one writes a new introduction, and a conclusion, for a previously published article will still count as original content. Have you any comment on this technique?
hasnol said on March 23, 2008 at 4:01 am
great info about seo jim. keep your best work all the time.

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