SEO.html - Last updated: Friday 2nd January 2009, 10:57 PT, AHD
Register your website with all search engines - starting with the most popular: Google. Click here to register your website with Google Canada. Click here to register your website with Google UK. All search engines have a similar registration feature. Have a memorable, (short preferably) domain name like sfu.com or ubc.com Go to: www.misk.com to check for available domain names. W3C Quality Tips for Webmasters: Quality Tips Have an icon for your website, e.g. look at the icon on your browser for www.annedawson.com The home page is crucial: it has to look very professional, with an interesting picture - updated every week. Every week. The other pages - the "information" pages, like schedules, important dates, etc - you can use, "as is", because the style is not so important here - it's the accurate information that is important. Have information really easy to find: Have a website map. Have a web search text box. Video clips are good for attracting an audience, but take time and slow down the main website page - so put them on another page, e.g. the Events and Activities page. If there are any document files (.doc, .pdf, .doc. .txt etc) linked to the website, convert them to .html files, so you can place links and meta and title etc on every page. Have lots of links on every page. Put a Copyright notice on every page (footnote). Put a link to the home page on every page, including the home page (index.html). Put a Privacy notice on every page (footnote). Good content on the home page repeating meta keywords. Meta tags - title, description, keywords CRUCIAL: use succinct and few key short meta descriptions. Spattering of keywords in copy on the home page. Home page image with alt attribute containing main keywords. Add new web pages daily. Have a "Last updated" statement (footnote). Update index page (home page) daily - even if only to update the "Last updated" statement (this is what programmers mean by 'touching' the file.) Have high quality content - especially on the home page. Asolutely no spelling errors. Use uppercase and lowercase but NOT ALL CAPITALS - it looks like you're SHOUTING. No dead links. All web pages validated for quality: XHTML version 1.0 Strict (current at date this file last updated), with external style sheet CSS version 2.1 version (current at date this file last updated). Links links links, from everywhere to your home page. Request related quality websites like (like www.sfu.ca, www.ubc.ca) provide a link to your website. Have your website address on all your promotional material: business cards, notepaper etc. Make web pages sticky (i.e. hard to leave). Boomerang effect: give your website audience a reason to return to your website - for example, if your browsers are university students, give them a little tool to calculate their GPAs, a tool to determine the final exam score they must achieve to get an A grade, provide exam results, exam timetables, transcripts, etc. Register your domain name for longer than 2 years (proof of permanence) - this suggests that the website is an established website. Tailor the robots.txt website file, see: SEO Consultants Copyright: Anne Dawson 2007
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