Home Improvement Blog

Much of what I have read on SEO is about site or page structure. After running many experiments, I have not found this to make much difference. Content and back links are 85% of the secret to success. 3 years ago, optimized structure was a key but today you just need to have a reasonable structure.

Here are some basics:

· Make sure that your internal linking is consistent. Always use absolute links (http://www.mysite.com/file.htm) and not relative links (../file.htm).

· Make your URL as simple as possible. Avoid the question mark if you can and never pass more than two variables in the URL. Avoid excessively long URLs.

· Use Dashes and not underscores in URL.

· Directory names are just as good as File names in the URL.

· Always have a descriptive, unique title tag and description.

· Some sites now leave the keywords blank and let the search engines pick them based on content so keywords are not critical.

· Photos help with rankings since search engines can’t rate photos yet so you get the benefit of the doubt that they are good. Use the alt and title tag on your photo.

· Keyword stuffing over 10% of the page content is a waste of time and could hurt

· Pages should contain at least 400 word of original content. I see lots of huge pages that rank well so there seems to be no cap on the maximum size of a page.

· Page file size is important so try to make your files small. Using CSS makes the user experience better and makes your page files smaller.

· Don’t use frames.

· Avoid cloaking.

· Use 301 redirects if you no longer want to use a page or site.

· Avoid misspellings and errors as much as possible.

That’s it, now focus on your content and back links.

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