I’ve been working on SEO a lot in the last few months, learning and more every day. Below is a list of 10 tips to improve your search engine ranking. I’m sure these are nothing new to many of my readers, but on the other hand, many of my readers are beginners. I know the beginners could always use the tips! 
1) Get your website listed in search engines – especially the big ones. Many people overlook this – even I did it. I didn’t list my site in many search engines until a good friend of mine told me I should.
2) Directories, directories. I know many people say that directories are useless nowadays, but I disagree. They are a good way of increasing your page rank. There are many high page rank, dofollow directories.
3) Make sure your sites coding is nice and clean. The spiders hate bad code. There are quite a few resources that can check your code to make sure it is fine. You should also have an actual person look through it.
4) Keep linking to your site. Don’t come off as a spammer – but link to your site when you can. Backlinks are golden. Be sure the backlinks are from somewhat relevant sites.
5) Use your posts permalink to your advantage. Put a few of the posts keywords in there, while keeping the title…a title (if that makes sense). Having the permalink as “/article1” does not help you SEO-wise.
6) Check your titles. They can usually be anywhere from 80 to 100 characters. Put some keywords in there. Search engines really look closely at titles.
7) ALT tags. Search engines are not able to view pictures. Your pictures should have ALT tags.
8 ) Tag your posts. Bloggers sometimes forgot to use tags in their post. When using tags, keep it between 5-8 tags per post. That is what I’ve heard works best, and has also worked for me. Anymore than tags than that is overdoing it.
9) Use forums. You can build a lot of one way links, while becoming more knowledgeable. Find a form that you like, and start posting there regularly. Have your website(s) in your signature.
10) Text based sitemaps. Spiders cannot crawl certain navigation (flash, java, etc..). Thus, it is important to have a text-based sitemap for the spiders.
These aren’t new ideas to SEO, but they are definitely ones that many bloggers overlook (I’ve even done it, don’t worry). Putting a little bit of time into these things can make a world of difference from a SEO aspect.
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes, these are basic SEO tips, but many beginners don’t know about these, so it’s a good post for them.
Instead of these, I think keep producing great article could helps a lot. Google is human and they will read your article before giving you rank.
Regards,
Lee
Lee,
Definitely agree with you — great tips for beginners.
I should have mentioned content, but I assumed people already put that number 1. Content, content, content. Thanks for pointing that out though!
Haha no problem Gooroo, you had great tips here too. Even though you don’t mention it, people should know well about this. But I think you should mention it in your article since you’re targeting beginner, they should know it.
Anyway, great post!
Regards,
Lee
I’m going to be making a new post similar to this one soon — I’ll definitely add that in for the beginners!
Forums are always great. Have your link in your signature and as long as you stay active people will be clicking on it. I do that on a few different forums and I always get a few visitors from those forums.
I agree. Forums are a great source of traffic. I use Digital Point Forums, and get a ton of traffic from there.
I use Digital Points also, Im there all the time, but I dont get as many visitors from DP as Id like to, or as some other people do.
Yeah, it has died down for me — I used to get a lot more visitors. I think it’s because everyone is on there to promote their own site — they don’t really care about anybody else’s. Looks like it’s time to find a new DP!
I especially agree with the picture tags point. I had so much traffic coming in for a keyword and didn’t know why, until I realised it was number 1 in Google image search. I use a plugin called SEO friendly images or something – it adds your post title as the alt tag, perfect if you’re already using keywords in the title.
There you go! Point proven
I’ve also received quite a bit of traffic from images. I don’t rank number 1 for any images (for now) but I do still get some decent traffic. I’m definitely going to check out that plugin. Could be very useful.
Nice tips for people who don’t know about SEO basics.
Yeah, great for the beginners.
Great tips. I would also say that looking for sites that show top commentators is also good as you will get some traffic from their site. Commenting is a great plus on sites with commentluv plugin as it will show your last blog post and you will get some love back.
Be very careful of titles, it will attract users if they find it interesting.
Yeah, great addition George. Deneil pointed that out to me a while ago, so I try to pay more attention to blogs with Top Commentators now. Blogs with commentluv are also great.
The title is probably the most important part of a post. Most people will stop reading if the title is boring.
In order to be an expert we need to learn the basic first then the skill will coming later naturally..You did it man
Exactly Een. I always expected success from the beginning, which is just now how things work. I failed in a sense (picked a bad domain name), but am back, much more knowledgeable, and ready to succeed
What directories do you recommend? I did sign up at Blog Catalog, but that’s the only one at this point.
Christie,
Have a look here:
avivadirectory.com/strongest-directories
There’s a good list of directories. Some are paid, and some are free.
Getting listed on good Directories is always tough task.. I never tried or concentrated to submit TZI in directories.
Yeah, it is a tough task. Nonetheless, if you work at your blog hard, have quality content, etc., it is definitely not too difficult to get accepted into the good directories.
basic steps for SEO
Yeah, very basic, yet important.
Gooroo,
I NEVER submit my posts to Tip’d, Stumble, etc., am I making a mistake? Should I not stumble my own post? Should I stumble my own post? HELP!
You definitely should submit them. You’re missing out on traffic + backlinks. You can Stumble your own posts, but try to Stumble other peoples posts in between. It doesn’t look good to Stumble your own posts only, you know? Hope that helped!
Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any other questions.