how to promote websites by using SEO

**taccom** · 08 September 2010, 11:46 PM

Hello all

I thought I'd weigh in on this discussion with my own experience. I have two sites in particular that rank extremely high in a the major engines for my key words/terms so I think I can offer some thoughts that might be helpful.

Number one is - Written CONTENT is king. Well written textual content is "spider food". Articles (content) should be a minimum of 500 words, with correct grammar and spelling-error free. Regular addictions to your content increase your standing otherwise the site is deemed stale after a time. It is generally advisable to keep your subject matter distinct as in once subject per page if possible.

Proper headings (H1 and H2) ... I'm still wondering how to do that in DP6 really but am using bold <strong> type and type size as a work-around until that is solved ... are important and should contain the key words/phrases for the subject matter of the page/article. Your page title, description and body text should repeat those words/terms but make sure you do not over use them as that is considered 'spamming' and gets you penalized ... generally using good English will keep that in balance ... if it sounds awkward to read it will likely appear awkward to the spiders reviewing the page.

Images ... always apply alt text (a description) as that gives the images something to offer the spiders.

Flash ... avoid cluttering your page, particularly at the top with flash ... spiders cannot read inside flash files so they are useless for SEO purposes and in fact can actually create something of a barrier to the spiders trying to crawl your content.

Page naming ... your html/htm file should be the keywords/phrases for the page ... i.e search_engines.htm would be far less effective than how_to_make_content_readable_to_search_engines.htm Generally I try to make the page title the htm file name as well.

Little trick ... If you are monetizing your page put some Google Adsense on it .. pulls Google to you and since they still represent the lion's share of search traffic, they are the ones to please.

Google also has webmaster tools and their tool to generate a sitemap is great as a sitemap is really important.

Linking. Internal links between content on your site (from page to page) is a great way to help the spiders move laterally through your site as well as vertically through pages. Linking out to other sites is OK but don't over-do it as that will pull rank from you and push it to the site you're linking to (basically outbound links imply that your site is subordinate to the site you are linking to.) Inbound links are gold provided they are from sites that have compatible content. In other words MarthasHotDogs.com linking to ImTheXaraWiz.com isn't worth much for obvious reasons ... whereas JoesPrintShop.com linking to you is great due to the compatible nature of the sites.

Promotion. The fastest and easiest way to do that is to lose your shyness and post links to your new material as you write it on sites like Redit, SumbleUpon and others ... you'll generate spikes of traffic but out of that, if your site is good, you'll keep a percentage of visitors coming back and also referring others to your site (virally marketing)

Install tracking code in ALL your pages ... I use StatCounter ... its free, excellent and they give GREAT support when something weird is going on.

Well those are the basics of some key issues I think will get you started, but remember that from crawl to indexing can take a while ... don't expect to show up right away in search returns. But I will tell you from experience that when you see your site climbing (which you can with StatCounter ... you can actually visit the search page and see where you ranked) its a thrill and when you see pages coming up in the top ten of tens of millions you know you're doing your work.

Hope this helps everyone!

Cheers
Paul

**steve.ledger** · 09 September 2010, 02:38 AM

Originally Posted by taccom

Proper headings (H1 and H2) ... I'm still wondering how to do that in DP6 really but am using bold <strong> type and type size as a work-around until that is solved ...

Solved

See attached, view the source for proof.

**taccom** · 09 September 2010, 03:01 AM

Originally Posted by sledger

Solved

See attached, view the source for proof.

Hi Sledger ... Bear in mind I'm not a code guy like you ... I can see the <h1></h1> and <h4></h4> tags in the code but am scratching me head as to how you got them in there. Thought you may have applied the H tags as names in the gallery ... doesn't seem so ... care to share??

By the way, I put a ticket in to support a few days ago about an issue ... they're still chewing it over me thinks ... issue was that in IE users were getting a 'Stack Overflow at line 0' error ... no problems with FF or Chrome ...any thoughts? Problem page is at tactical-graphic-design(dot)com

Thanks a bunch
Paul

**steve.ledger** · 09 September 2010, 03:26 AM

Originally Posted by taccom

Hi Sledger ... Bear in mind I'm not a code guy like you ... I can see the <h1></h1> and <h4></h4> tags in the code but am scratching me head as to how you got them in there. Thought you may have applied the H tags as names in the gallery ... doesn't seem so ... care to share??

You must be wondering why the leading and trailing bullets • are there in designer but not when previewed surely?

By the way, I put a ticket in to support a few days ago about an issue ... they're still chewing it over me thinks ... issue was that in IE users were getting a 'Stack Overflow at line 0' error ... no problems with FF or Chrome ...any thoughts? Problem page is at tactical-graphic-design(dot)com

That's a very hefty page, lots of stuff loading there. I'd definitely lighten it up.
As for the stack overflow. Probably a gadget, maybe the Silverlight you have there.

**taccom** · 09 September 2010, 03:42 AM

Originally Posted by sledger

You must be wondering why the leading and trailing bullets • are there in designer but not when previewed surely?

Yes ... I noticed that ... just found the tag in a placeholder ... didn't know a character could be made into one! Cool! That's fantastic! Thank you!

That's a very hefty page, lots of stuff loading there. I'd definitely lighten it up.
As for the stack overflow. Probably a gadget, maybe the Silverlight you have there.

I'll go look for that ... not using Silverlight unless it came along with a gadget ... appreciate you pointing me in the right direction!
Just joined the Xara-Users forum ... VERY nice!!

**steve.ledger** · 09 September 2010, 04:01 AM

This contact form is Silverlight.
The blue loading spinner animation is a dead give-away for one thing, also right-click will show the label.

**taccom** · 09 September 2010, 04:09 AM

Hey thanks Steve! I wouldn't have found that ... I'll try one of the widgets in the Xara gallery instead!

Really enjoying reading the group on Xara-Users ... loads of really sharp people!

Cheers
Paul

**taccom** · 09 September 2010, 06:12 PM

Hey Steve ... that Stack Overflow problem wasn't solved after all by removing that Silverlight form gadget ... at first it seemed it did. So debugging I went and may have found a bug in DP6 as well.

I deleted (one by one) all scripted gadgets and the problem kept re-occurring right down to a virtually bare-bones page. I uploaded that page as a test file & then went to the source code. Low & behold I found that even though I had deleted the AnswerTips gadget (the actual offender) from the page, the script for it remained embedded in the source code. I manually deleted that in Notepad and presto ... problem gone in IE, the only browser (other than Xara preview) where it was occurring.

So the issue I'm pondering is why that script was left in the source code after the placeholder had been removed from the page & the page re-saved & re-exported.