There is a lot of information out there on how to optimize your site for the search engines. However, if you observe, most of this information is either repeated or just theoretical. There is no practical explanation for it. There is no proper point wise explanation on do’s and don’t s for SEO.

Believe me when i started off, i found things really difficult. Everybody spoke about SEO and i read loads of books and stuff on it, but still did not know how to practically implement it. No webmaster out there had courtesy enough to lay down the basic steps to optimize a site, at least the standard steps.

Because of this, it took me many months of research in finding those hidden webmasters who really want the newbees to excel in their work. But most of these webmasters are not easy to find on internet. I have researched extensively and came out with some very important points that could really turn your site into a SEO site.

First of all the material you find on internet regarding SEO is written or prepared out of experience and not on facts. Its trial and error method that was utilized by many webmasters and then came out with their theories. Google has never revealed the way its search engine works. Nor did any other search engine like Yahoo or MSN for that matter.

Hence, we are left with no option but to rely on information that is most probably accurate, but no one can say its 100% as search engines want it. Go ahead and implement these and see how your site stats increase.

The Positive On-Page SEO factors

• Keyword in URL: The process of identification and giving preference goes in First word is best, second is second best, etc.
• Keyword in Domain Name: This is similar to the name of pages that have hyphens, for example: “automobile-truck-one”.
• Keyword in Title Tag: Make sure you put your Keyword in Title tag that is close to beginning. This title tag should be between 10 – 60 characters with no special characters.
• Keyword in Description Meta Tag: This shows the theme of your site and should be less than 200 characters. Though Google no longer “relies” upon this tag, it may sometimes use it.
• Keyword in Keyword Meta Tag: This should be less than 10 words. Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body text. If not, it can be penalized for irrelevance. No single word should appear more than twice. If not, it may be considered spam. Google purportedly no longer uses this tag, but others do.
• Keyword density in Body text: The keywords shouldn’t be stuffed into body text. The amount of keywords in the body text should be about 5 – 20% for all types of keywords (total) and 1-6% for one keyword. Too much stuffing would penalize your site under spamming.
• Keywords in H1,H2 & H3: Many people ignore this particular aspect. Make sure Hx font is effectively used.
• Keyword Font Size: Italics is same as emphasis while strong is same as bold.
• Keyword proximity (for 2+ keywords): Placing them directly adjacent to each other is the best.
• Keyword prominence: This can be important if its on the top (at the most) and in big fonts.
• Domain Name Extension/ Top Level Domain – TL: .gov sites seem to be the highest status, .edu sites seem to be given a high status, .org sites seem to be given a high status, .com sites excel in encompassing all the spam/ crud sites, resulting in the need for the highest scrutiny/ action by Google.
• Fresh Pages: search engines love fresh content, fresh pages.
• Content: Make sure you put unique and fresh content since search engines feed on it. They simply love it.
• Updates periodicity: Search engine give high status to sites that update regularly.
• Site Size: Search engines, particularly Google, loves big sites. But it should be unique and fresh site. Any duplicated pages would be discarded by Google.
• Domain age: Old is gold, this is the mantra of Google and other search engines.

The Positive Off-page factors

• Page Rank: Make sure your site achieves good page rank. High Page Ranked sites get many benefits, they are treated like VIPs.
• Internal links: Internal links should also be well maintained. Ensure that anchor texts use proper keywords.
• External Links: Always get linked to quality sites and sites that are trusted by search engines. This will give you high page rank if links are a lot.

These are some of the points if followed, Every site would perform really good in the search engines. But the most important factor to remember is PATIENCE & HARD WORK! They pay really well!

Good luck.

For any new site to get indexed faster and thus gain search engine liking, it is very important that you follow certain basic rules which are essential. These rules are standard and always give you initial results. The advanced optimization of the site comes at a later stage when you have attained the initial success.

There are just about few tips that should be kept in mind while you come up with your new site.

When creating a new website, ensure that you come up with a unique theme, rather than copied one. It doesn’t really make sense to use a theme that is used by thousands of people. Unique and creative styles attract people and give them pleasant browsing expreince which is essential to retain them. So make sure though you use the free templates available on web, try to customise it so that the look is completely changed. No body should be able to make out that its been built on a free template.

When coming up with a new site, just leave aside all your bad habits and short cut methods that go against basic ethics of business. Deception, Dishonesty, lying and any such characteristic would not give you long term benefits and can even get you permanant ban from internet. Black listed websites suffer heavy losses in their revenue. That is why ensure that you go by the ethics and make sure you avoid all the bad practices. Keyword stuffing, H2 tag spamming etc are of no use to a person who is looking for a professional approach in this field.

When you create a website, it is essential to let people know about it. Most of the people come up with some beautiful sites and ideas, but fail to make their site reach out to the world. It is important that you work harder in promoting the site than looking after its style. We know of sites that look terrible, but have page rank 6 and get millions of page views. Thats because they make sure the site is promoted well. Back links to your website play major role in making your site valuable to a search engine. It is important that you put all your efforts in building backlinks to your site by posting comments, discussing in forums, posting articles and news releases, becoming a part of social networking etc. But one thing that should be bore in mind is that you should always try for backlinks from authority sites and related sites.

When you create a website, do not wait for few months to pass by before you begin building links. Immediately from day 1 start building links as many as possible.

When you create a website and start building links, ensure you relate it to sites that are marked good and always avoid black listed ones.

When you create a website, have a daily routine of updating it with new and unique content that attracts people. Your content should not be copied from anywhere and should be hand typed by using your own thoughts. You may read through magazines, news articles, others articles, but in the end, make sure you type it yourself with your own original words. Rephrasing the same article would not help your site.

When you create a website, make sure you come up with quality pages so that other webmasters link to your site. It is possible that a PR 6 ranked site might get interested in one of your articles which he may link to. Quality matters a lot.

When you create a website, be patient while you go through the above mentioned points. It takes time for everything to get started. You just work hard until you see some positive signs, after which you may change your strategy.

Hopefully these tips would help each one of you in building up a quality online business.

Generally the questions posed regarding duplicate content show the kind of confusion and rumors that haunt the webmasters. In one of the recent conferences that took place in Chicago, the following problem was aptly dealt with. Here are few points that show throw light on this aspect:

Definition of Duplicate content: Chunks of Content that are in or across the domains which may completely match some other content or are similar is referred to as Duplicate Content. In most cases, this is not intended and is not malicious in its origin like the forums that generate both stripped down targetted pages and regular ones, linking of or store items shown through multiple distinct web addresses etc. Sometimes in order to achieve search engine ranking or to gain more traffic, the content is duplicated across the domains.

Content that is not considered Duplicate: Articles that are written exactly in two different languages like English and German is not considered as duplicate. Also, occasional quotes etc is also not flagged as duplicate content.

The reason why Search Engines take duplication seriously: The purpose of Search Engines is to throw out unique and diverse content when a particular user searches for some information. Duplication of content across the web would compromise this intent. The need of Search Engines would eventually be lost if this is not controlled.

How do Search Engines resolve this: SE try hard to distinguish and index information that is unique. For example, the filtering is done in such a way that if your site has articles are in regular and printer versions and none of them are blocked by using either no index meta tag or robots.txt, then Search Engine chooses only one version to list. In few cases where SE perceives that duplicate content is shown with an intention of manipulating the rankings and hence deceive its users, it makes necessary adjustments in ranking and indexing of the sites involved. As such SE concentrates more on filtering than rank adjustments. Therefore, in any circumstance, for a webmaster who duplicates the content on his site, he would see his page falling down in index and eventually banned for it.

How to proactively deal with Duplicate stuff
Block appropriately: Instead of SE algorithms deciding which version to select, its better that webmasters show the SE which one to select. Just disallow those versions that you don’t want SE to index.
Make use of 301s: Make good use of 301 redirects in your .htaccess file to aptly redirect users, the SE bots and other spiders; if you are site is restructured.
Internal Linking consistency: Endeavor to keep your internal linking consistent; don’t link to /page/ and /page and /page/index.htm.
Make use of TLDs: use top level domains wherever and whenever possible to handle country related content. This will help SE serve the right version of your information. We’re more likely to know that .us indicates US-focused content, for instance, than /US or US.example.com.
Careful Syndicate: If you put your content on other sites, ensure that they have a link back to your original article. Even with that, note that SEs always show the (unblocked) version which it thinks is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.
Use the preferred domain feature of webmaster tools: If other sites link to yours using both the www and non-www version of your URLs, you can let SE know which way you prefer your site to be indexed.
Minimize boilerplate repetition: For example, Instead of including lengthy copyright text on the bottom of every page, include a very brief summary and then link to a page with more details.
Avoid publishing stubs: Users don’t like seeing “empty” pages, so avoid placeholders where possible. This means not publishing (or at least blocking) pages with zero reviews, no product listings, etc., so users (and bots) aren’t subjected to a zillion instances of “Below you’ll find a superb list of all the great Products in [insert productname]…” with no actual listings.
Understand your CMS: Ensure you know how the content is displayed on your Web site, particularly if it includes a blog, a forum, or related system that often shows the same content in multiple formats.
Don’t worry be happy: Don’t fret too much about sites that scrape (misappropriate and republish) your content. Though annoying, it’s highly unlikely that such sites can negatively impact your site’s presence in Google. If you do spot a case that’s particularly frustrating, you are welcome to file a DMCA request to claim ownership of the content and have SE deal with the rogue site.

To conclude, proper awareness of duplicate content issues and little time of maintainence should make you help SE provide better user experience with unique and relevant content as well as make your site do better on ranking and listing!