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Search engine optimization, SEO, involves creating pages for two audiences, visitors and search engines. What you feed them, how much, and how often is much like feeding your family. Quality ingredients and fresh content are equally important. To satisfy the appetite of the major search engines, operate your small business website like an expensive restaurant. Provide a menu with high quality and fresh content to have the best ingredients for success.
Do not attempt to deceive search engines. You will be caught. You will be punished.
What Major Search Engines and Visitors Expect
Websites should be designed for visitors. That's rule #1. Provide visitors with easy navigation and an obvious theme throughout your site. Stale and dusty websites are those that are launched and forgotten. Add to the menu often and you are more likely to keep the search engines and your visitors happy.
Search engines may bring traffic to your website. What visitors find will determine if they stay or leave. You may want to read my 5 Second Rule for Small Business Owners advice article.
Following is my version of a menu for Search Engine Optimization.
Popular Appetizers for SEO (not critical, just nice to have)
1. DOCTYPE Statement
2. Proper HTML Code
3. META Description
4. META Key Words
The Main Menu to Feed Search Engines (very important)
1. Keywords in the Page Title
2. Keywords in the H Tags
3. The Age of Your WWW Domain
4. The Size of Your Website
5. Backlinks (inbound links to your pages)
6. Keywords in Text Links
7. High Quality, Original Content
Dessert Menu for SEO (nice additions)
1. XML Sitemaps for Google and TXT for Yahoo
2. A Weblog, or Blog
3. A Forum for Your Niche
4. Related Articles
Do NOT include the following on your SEO menu.
These are just some of the items that may hurt visitors and SEO, and eventually you. Websites, like restaurants, will be out of business if they poison their visitors. Here are elements on websites that you should avoid.
1. Do not have affiliate only advertising pages. You need original content.
2. Do not have over optimized pages. It won't help SEO and may confuse your visitors.
3. Do not have link schemes, inbound or outbound. Deceptive practices will backfire.
4. Do not have identical content hosted on two separate domains (mirror sites).
5. Do not have plagiarized content. It is illegal, and search engines can tell.
6. Do not have foul language as in cursing, or content that is hateful or racist.
Follow this menu for success in your small business website. You may learn more by searching unfamiliar terms online, or visit my blog for small business advice. Details are coming in future articles and reports.
