What are the most important SEO Tips?
- Your title should be under 55 letters.
- Do not use backdoor pages.
- Do not cloak.
- Do not spam.
- Add robots.txt to your website.
- Add robots.txt to your website's root directory.
- Use CSS instead of color, size, and font tags.
- Include a sitemap for your website.
- Include a 404 page for your website.
- Make sure you pages are under 100k in size.
- Use keywords in your titles.
- Use keywords in your H1, H2, and H3 tags.
What is cross linking?
This is the practice of websites linking to each other for the sole purpose of increase their link popularity. This means of increasing link popularity through cross linking has been reduced in the November, 2005 Google update.
What is PageRank (PR)?
PageRank is what Google uses to determine your page's popularity. Here's Google's explaination:
Quote:
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.
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Google's explaination can be found
here.
How do I find out what my website's PageRank is?
There are many websites online that can show you your page's PageRank. Some of those websites are
DigitalPoint,
PageRank.net,
Future PageRank,
WebmasterBrain,
StarGeek,
PR Lookup and many others. There is also the
Google Toolbar that you can add to both Internet Explorer and FireFox, which will show you the PageRank of the page you are viewing.
What are SERPs?
SERPs is an acronym for
Search
Engine
Results
Pages. If you search for a term through a search engine, the results you get are your SERPs. This term is usually used when discussing how well a keyword you're targeting is doing in search engines. For example, you might say "my <insert term here> is doing well in SERPs."
What is Anchor Text? Is it important?
Anchor Text is the hyperlink text that's clicked on. For example "Internet Business Forum" is the Anchor Text in the following:
HTML Code:
<a href="http://www.netbusinesstalk.com/">Internet Business Forum</a>
Anchor Text is extremely important. It is weighed heavily in search engines for keywords that you're targeting. It is important to receive incoming links with keywords in the Anchor Text. For example, NetBusinessTalk will rank higher for "Internet Business Forum" in search engines for every incoming link with that Anchor Text.
How do I get backlinks?
There's no blueprint to getting backlinks. What's important to do is have good content that people like. People who like your content will want to share it with others and link to it through their website(s). This is the best way to accumulate backlinks. However, you can also submit your website to various directories. This will give you a lot of backlinks, but because these directories are so heavily used by people submitting their websites, the backlink won't be as beneficial as the previous way. Here's a list of directories you can submit your website to:
Why does Google show fewer backlinks than MSN and Yahoo?
MSN and Yahoo display all of your backlinks across your entire website unlike Google who just displays the backlinks to the specific page you're looking at. Google knows about all of your backlinks, but decides not to display them in order to not allow webmasters to manipulate the results.
Do outbound links help or hurt?
Outbounds links don't help. They only hurt. However, don't worry too much about outbound links on your website. What's important is that they be relevent to the content that they're being linked on. You don't want to just link everything, though. Be selective when using outbound links, but don't ignore them.
Are Meta Tags important?
The vast majority of search engines don't use your meta tags in their search engine ranking algorithms, but they can be important in some cases and cannot hurt. They often act as a description for the page if the search engine cannot make out enough from your content to give it an accurate description. I wouldn't spend too much time on meta tags, but they're important enough that you should at least fill them out.
Should I submit my website by hand or through software?
There's a lot of software and websites that claim to submit your website to hundreds, if not thousands, of search engines. However, there's been lots of reports by webmasters that they receive better results by submitting their websites by hand. I tend to agree that you should take the few minutes it takes to submit your website by hand. Here are the submission pages of the most important search engines:
How do I stop search engines from indexing pages?
To stop search engines from indexing your pages, you will need to set up a "robots.txt" file. A great tutorial for how to set up a "robots.txt" file can be found
here. Not only can you stop search engines from indexing certain pages of your website, but you can also direct where search engines should index.
Does using AdSense help Google index my web page?
This is a question that is constantly being debated in the Search Engine Optimization Community. My personal opinion, and what most people agree on, is that it does help Google index your website, but in
no way does it help increase your PageRank or search engine ranking.
Should I use relative links or absolute links?
You should be using absolute links and not relative links. Relative links can be missed by search engine crawlers and absolute links will not be. Google has suggested using absolute links and so have other search engines.
When is Google going to update its PageRank?
I wish I knew. I wish anyone knew. However, Google doesn't tell anyone when they are updating their Google PageRank. It's a mystery to us all and there's no way for us to know. We just need to sit back and wait until we actaully see change. Furthermore, Google doesn't follow a monthly or quarterly system, but updates randomly, so we cannot interpret past updates to understand their pattern.
Useful threads at NetBusinessTalk on SEO:
Search Engine Optimization FAQ 
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