This page offers details on search engine optimization including techniques for off page and on page optimization. To read the general description, please click: Seach Engine Optimization
To get a detailed description of everything listed below click to receive the Softrim White Paper on Search Engine Optimization
On-page Optimization - On-page search engine optimization techniques are employed in the programming of new websites and updating or modifying them. These include careful consideration of:
Keywords
Title and Meta tags
Keyword Density
Bold Text
Page Design
ALT Tags
Site Maps
Anchor text
Frames
W3C compatibility
Black Hat Tactics - These are techniques that result in websites being blacklisted by one or more search engines. This means that they will not show up in any search engine results even when they have relevant pages to what is being searched. The following are some common black hat techniques:
Keyword Stuffing
Hidden Text
Cloaking
Doorway Pages and Redirects
Duplicate Sites
Interlinking - Incoming links are very highly rated by search engines and are in the off-page optimization section. However, random linking to build the overall link popularity has to be done carefully to ensure unique content and separation of topics.
Off-page Optimization - Off-page optimization comes into play after your website is live. The objective is to get a high PR after it is live by increasing the link popularity. This means increasing the number of other ranked websites that link back to yours, as long as they have relevant material. Reciprocal links based on business agreements to ‘link to each other’ regardless of relevancy can be detected by search engines, and are either ignored or penalized. The challenge is to maximize the number of highly ranked sites linking back and make sure that the page title and anchor text used in the links are relevant. If the site linking back has too many outbound links, it may be ignored by search engines. SEO techniques in off-page optimization include:
Publishing and Promoting Articles
Participating in Forums and on Blogs
Advertising
Partnering
Triangular linking
Pinging Google
Internal Link Structure - A good link structure of your website allows the ranking of the homepage to flow thru to the secondary pages. If 500 other sites link to the homepage, then the link power of the homepage is spread to the secondary pages. The internal link structure is critical in directing search engines to the most important pages based on the search topic, with the aid of site maps. Good internal link structure involves the following techniques:
Absolute versus Relative links
Broken Links
Optimizing the Number of Links
Privacy
Exclusion
RSS Feeds - To maintain high PR, search engines reward acceleration in the rate of change of the content in a website. Rankings do not hold up if a site stays static, and while a steady rate of change is preferable to no change, an increase in the rate of change is preferred. It may not be practical to generate an ongoing accelerated rate of change. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an external resource to keep a site’s content changing. RSS is a lightweight XML format designed to share Web content. RSS feeds containing top search engine results for keywords associated with the website should be added to the site; they will continually update the content without taking up internal resources. Multiple feeds on your website will most likely result in higher PR and keep Users on your website longer. Sources for RSS feeds include MSN, Yahoo News, Gigablast, PCWorld, CNN, MSNBC, BBC and many other news and information sites. Softrim uses http://www.rssmix.com, a service that seamlessly blends together multiple feeds into one. That allows targeting several data sources into one seamless feed. RSS on a website should not use JavaScript, since JavaScript content cannot be indexed by search engines.
404 SRC Errors - 400 and 500 type server response codes can have a negative influence on Spiders indexing your website. Most response code types in the 100 through 399 range (The 301 redirect is discussed later) indicate that all is proper and are not seen by the User. The 404 error is most common and affects SEO because it tells a Spider that the page is missing and this may pose problems for the whole website.
Causes for 404 errors
The URL Secondary Pages
Custom 404 Error Page
301 SRC Errors - The 301(and 302, 307) server response codes are used for redirection. These codes indicate that your webpage is located elsewhere. When a redirect occurs, the web server that issues the redirect does not return content but references the new absolute URL. Redirections should not be chained (a redirect that in turn redirects again) because Spiders may schedule the result of the redirection for later instead of immediately fetching the new page. The 301 code also indicates to search engines that link equity from the previous URL should be credited to the new one so that the new page will maintain the PR of the original page. A 301 Redirect to a new website should only be done if there is relevant content to avoid de-listing.
Canonical URL - URLs can be specified in many ways that may seem to lead to the same website; however Google can be made to canonicalize the preferred URL.
Supplemental Results - Google returns search results either from its Main index or its Supplemental index. Google seems to place fewer restraints on Spidered sites for its supplemental index than it does for its Main index. The PR of a website that appears in the supplemental index is not supposed to be adversely affected simply because it is on the supplemental results. However, when a page appears in the supplemental index, it could be a sign of impending problems: (none of the items listed below may be actual causes, but nevertheless they should be addressed to improve SEO
Flash for Animation - The Flash file format (.swf) is the universal method for presenting animation, interactivity and sound in one file. Flash files are scalable, use streaming media format (can begin playing before downloading is complete) and produce relatively small files for basic movies. Softrim uses Flash files extensively in websites. The challenge with Flash websites is that Spiders do not index the content of Flash animation directly.
META Tags - Meta means ‘about this subject” and a meta tag is an html tag that contains information not displayed to the User. Search engines no longer index by the use of meta tags although they are still used as the description when the website is listed in the search results.
The Title Tag
The meta tags
Keywords Meta Tag
Description Meta Tag
Robots Meta Tag.
Body Tags
Dynamic Websites - Many sites need pages that display varying data in real time, especially in e-commerce and other sites having User accounts. These sites generate a non-static URL to build and display some pages. A dynamic site must use variables in the URL that contain a query string (?) or database characters (#&*!%). Spiders have problems indexing these pages since they don't exist until a User selects the variable(s). Spiders cannot select variables and so these pages may not get indexed. Google may index some dynamic pages containing 1 or 2 variables in the URL that can be decoded by its Spiders. In e-commerce sites such as http://www.bestrugs.com , critical product pages are often found after the first 2 variables since there are many attributes like brand, style, color, shape etc. SEO techniques for improving dynamic page indexing are:
Lynx
URL Rewrite Engine
ISAPI filter
Internal Links
Session Variables
Website Stubs
Do not Index Duplicate Content
SEO and JavaScript and CSS
IP address of the website (and its host) - Neither the same IP address nor the same class C IP range directly affect a websites SEO or PR. There is no evidence that interlinking websites on a shared IP cause search engines to view them as a cluster or any other blackhat tactic.
Google Sandbox - There is a hypothesis that websites with newly-registered domains or domains with frequent ownership or nameserver changes are placed in a 'penalty box’ by Google before ranking can begin, perhaps between 3 to 6 months. The website should be promoted and all the optimization items described herein should be worked on regardless.
Paid Submission
Paid Inclusion
Paid Placement
To read a detailed description request the Softrim White Paper on Search Engine Optimization