Underrated.co.uk – Search Engine Optimisation

A quick fire list of five tips that will help you get off to a good start with SEO:

1) Update Frequently

Not all sites require regular updates, but it is important to update your site as often as possible. If it’s not a traditional daily update style site, then why not think of adding industry news or a blog? Google and co are very fond of web properties that are current, and frown upon stagnant sites.

2) Reduce duplicate content

If you have an article site, make sure that you dont run a mirror, sister site or sub domain with the same or very similiar content. Google penalises duplicate content and as such  there is nothing to be gained from reproducing it elsewhere. The same applies to underhand activities like ripping off other peoples content. It will be noticed and you may well be penalised for it.

3) Location…location…location

If you run a site aimed at a regional audience, then your aim should be to appeal first and foremost to that very audience. For a UK targetted site for instance, you can better achieve this aim by hosting your site and domain within  the UK, primarily exchanging links with sites from the UK, getting featured in UK articles etc. Do all you can to make your web property ‘the go to place’ for visitors from the geographical area you are targetting.

4) Don’t be anti social

Tthere are so very many social networking sites and services that it’s no longer really an option to shut yourself off from them and just slog away in an attempt to improve your popularity. You need to help your content become viral on sites like digg.com , inform people of updates or musings on twitter.com , get your friends on facebook talking about a new service you’re offering and so on. It all helps and the backlinks will help too.

5) Spot Trends

If you become successful in a niche it’s all too easy to be so satisfied with what you’ve achieved that you make no effort to improve. Big mistake. There will always be competitors on your tail just waiting for you to ease off the gas. The net is fast moving, and if you miss a trick, by the time you’re back paying attention you’ve lost valuable time, which in turn can translate to customers, website ranking and reputation in general. Stay focussed, keep an eye on your competitors and any new developments in your line of business.

Website promotion is not only about what you do, but also what you do not do. Check out the below list for ten things to avoid when promoting your website:

1) Do not launch mirror websites

A mirror site is an exact copy of your site at a different address. If you launch a mirror version of your site search engines may well blacklist or penalise your the site. This will seriously harm your search engine positioning, so beware. The same problem can occasionally come about due to search engines indexing both the “yoursite.com” and “www . yoursite . com” versions of a site. This can be remedied by setting up a   permanent (301) redirect and also by setting a preferred domain in the google webmaster tools area.

2) Avoid using flash, frames, java on your website 

Extensive use of any of these (or even minor use in the case of a site navigation) can can hamper your search engine optimisation efforts. Using frames most likely will result in your site not being correctly indexed and you’ll be right back at the web design drawing board. That’s pretty much why frames are yesterdays news now. Search engines also have problems indexing flash and java, so I would be inclinded to steer clear of those too.

3) Optimise your entire site, NOT just your homepage

Many site owners begin and end their optimisation efforts on their homepage. This is due to their belief that the index page is the gateway to their website. If have have 100 pages of unique content though, why limit your optimisation efforts to one page – it’s insanity. All pages should have a unique title for starters. There would be nothing worst than an interesting article being linked to numerous times, only for it to appear as something non descript or incorrect in search engine rankings. 

4) Steer Clear of Keyword Calamities

It may be tempting to ue a whole host of irrelevant (to the content) keywords on a page and/or metatags in order to achieve high rankings for a certain term. This will very likely fail though, as google, yahoo and co are able to categorise the content and theme of your site, and any deviation from that is recognised. You could even be blacklisted. The same applies to keyword stuffing and the like. Honestly is the best policy. 

5) Avoid spamming

If you have a new site, it’s understandable that you want the world to see it. Spamming forums, blog comment sections, directories, newsletter lists and so on isn’t the way to go though. All it can bring you is a bad reputation. Many services offer to submit your site to hundreds of directories, when in reality if they do this with your site, they do it with thousands of others too. That means that your site will effectively appear in hundreds of link dumps that are next to worthless to search engines and may even count as a negative due to their spammy nature. The scattergun approach doesn’t wok.

6) Do not hound webmasters for link exchanges

Similiar to the above point. If your site is young, do not spend hour after hour emailing webmasters with much more popular sites than yours. Even if they are in the same niche it’s not a useful activity. Instead wait until you have build up a following and have had some successes. In that position you’ll be in a much better position to be accepted for a link exchange.

7) Achieve a balance between content and promotion / optimisation

Website promotion and SEO is an ongoing task. Popularity is not something that can be achieved overnight, do not forget that it goes hand in hand with content though. It’s very easy to get stuck in an optimisation mindset where content and thinking about interesting ideas for articles takes a backseat. In reality this IS central to promotion though. If you have an amusing or unqiue idea for an article this can drive your promotional efforts as it may well have a viral effect. Content is king.

8)  Don’t pay for what you can get for free

Many inexperieced webmasters get suckered into paying big bucks for “we sumbit your website to 20 billion directories” type offers. As stated earlier these are a bad idea. Instead you should look for niche directories that actually relate to the content of your site. Exchange links with similiar sized sites. Post occasionally to digg and such sites. Let your site grow naturally.

9) Do not rush to submit your site

If your site contains dead links of incomplete content, it’s not a great first impression to leave for visitors. Should you submit such a site to a editor reviewed website directory like dmoz, it will almost certainly be rejected for inclusion.

10)  Stop viewing promotion as a short term activity

Promoting a website is an ongoing activity, not something you dip into for a week or two in order to get things going. You have competition and they will always be looking for ways to gain an edge. If you take your foot on the gas, you will be overtaken.