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The 7 Points of Do-It-Yourself SEO
By Gordon Goodfellow (c) 2005

Have you ever been intimidated at the convoluted, jargon-ridden
information about Internet marketing for small businesses
available on the Net? What exactly is search engine optimization
anyway, and can I do it myself?

The answer is: Yes, you can! The basics of search engine
optimization are simple. It's all to do with the keyword content
of your text copy, and can be summarized in seven points.

1. Register a good domain name which reflects what your site is
about. Even if you are an established business, don't register
www.FredJones.com if you make widgets. Rather, you want to
register something like www.BestWidgets.com because that would
inspire confidence in people looking for quality widgets who
would not necessarily have heard of Fred Jones the widget-maker.

2. Name your page URLs based on reasons similar to the above,
except now you can be more specific. Search engines like to
know what your page is about. Name a page after a product
(BigYellowWidgets.htm) or a service or action
(Buy-Widgets-by-Post.htm) on one of the sales pages.

3. The text in the title tag is crucial in letting search engines
know what each page is about. Put your important keywords in your
title tags, using both the singular and plural versions (people
will search for both) and make these tags different and specific
for each page. For example, "Widgets and After Sales Widget
Services". Whatever you do, don't call the home page "Index",
but treat it almost as a mini-description.

4. The other tags (at the top of the html page) between the
two "HEAD" tags are not as important as the title tag, but
the description tag is still used by some search engines in
displaying what you would like web users to see when they scroll
down a page of search results. Some search engines don't use the
description tag at all; others, like Google, sometimes use part
of it together with part of the main body text surrounding
prominent keywords on your page. So you may as well treat the
description tag seriously; make it brief (about 25 to 30 words)
and as comprehensive as possible in the short space allowed.
Make sure you have your popular keywords included within your
description tag.

The ALT tag is used for a very short description of an image or
graphic file, and is what is displayed if you allow your mouse
pointer to hover above a graphic. These days it is not considered
important for search engines.

The COMMENT tag is never displayed on the body page, and is
used by coders and designers as an instruction or reminder to
themselves about what that section of html coding should be
doing; in the past, some webmasters in their quest for website
promotion and search engine ranking used to stuff keywords in
the comments tags, but now it is generally acknowledged that the
main search engines pay little or no attention to these.

5. Keyword density. Each search engine has its own preference
as to how many times a keyword phrase appears on the page in
order to signify the relevance of that keyword phrase (in other
words, in order to help the search engine understand what the
page is about). Around 5 to 8 per cent is a rough guide as to
the optimal level. Don't overdo it, otherwise it will be seen
as spam or keyword-stuffing. Also use your keywords in the
heading tags H1 and H2. There is an H3 tag as well, but it is
doubtful whether search engines bother with that, as it is
perceived as less prominent on the page, therefore less relevant
to what the page is about.

6. Don't forget good linking in your website marketing. Search
engines will judge the importance of your web pages to some
extent on the number and quality of incoming links from other
sites. Ask other webmasters with sites on similar themes to
yours for a link, in exchange for a link back. These sites
should not be in competition with yours, but should be similarly
themed. You may occasionally be asked by other webmasters if
they can link to your site. If this is so then have a look at
their site; make sure that their site is relevant, that it has
at least some PageRank, and that it just "feels" good, and has
no nasty surprises like redirects or unexpected popups. You
don't want to be associated with a "bad neighborhood"!

7. Make sure that important keywords are included in the anchor
text within inbound links from other sites. This is crucial to
search engines when they try to figure out the relevance and
importance of your pages. The inbound link from the other site
should take the form of something like this (I'm using normal
brackets instead of angle brackets so as not to use compromising
html): (A HREF="http://www.Yourwebname.com")your important
keywords included here(/A). You should definitely avoid something
like (A HREF="http://www.Yourwebname.com")click here(/A), which
tells search engines nothing except that your site is about
"click here". Be careful!

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Gordon Goodfellow has a background in marketing research and
is an SEO practitioner who lives and works in London, UK. He
advises clients on Internet marketing for small businesses via
his main website, http://www.applied-web-marketing.com.
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