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	<title>Luis Arana &#124; Web Designer, Web Developer, Multimedia Guru &#187; Online Marketing</title>
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		<title>SEO Basics</title>
		<link>http://www.luisarana.com/blog/2009/12/seo-basics/</link>
		<comments>http://www.luisarana.com/blog/2009/12/seo-basics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:56:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Luis Arana</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Code]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Online Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Development]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://luisarana.com/articles/?p=59</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization, also referred to as &#8220;SEO&#8221; is as much an art as a science and the standards and practices are ever changing. Every search engine and directory uses different algorithms and formulas to calculate a site&#8217;s position in their search results. Meta tags should be placed between the   section of your [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><div id="attachment_60" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 210px"><img class="size-full wp-image-60" title="Search Engine Optimization" src="http://luisarana.com/articles/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/St-Albans-Seo.jpg" alt="Search Engine Optimization" width="200" height="150" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Search Engine Optimization</p></div>
<p>Search Engine Optimization, also referred to as &#8220;SEO&#8221; is as much an art as a science and the standards and practices are ever changing. Every search engine and directory uses different algorithms and formulas to calculate a site&#8217;s position in their search results. Meta tags should be placed between the <head> </head> section of your HTML document.<br />
 <br />
Keywords<br />
When optimizing a site I generally try to use 25 keywords or less on the page. The first and most important keywords should be your individual brand and related terms, so if your site is called &#8220;Revolution Clothing&#8221;, your first keywords should look something like:<br />
<meta name="keywords" content="revolution clothing, revolution, clothes, revolutionary"><br />
The next words should be geographic and industry terms that fit your brand&#8230;<br />
urban wear, street clothes, new york, urban clothes, designer, ny, nyc, brooklyn&#8230;<br />
If you still haven&#8217;t reached your 25 keywords, use general industry words that you think people might seach for&#8230;.<br />
shirts, jackets, pants, hoodies, wrist bands, hats, caps<br />
So now you should have a basic keyword list to start with. We&#8217;ll refine these later when we look at our hit statistics and see which keywords are generating traffic and which aren&#8217;t. Your keywords should look something like this:<br />
<meta name="keywords" content="revolution clothing, revolution, clothes, revolutionary, urban wear, street clothes, new york, urban clothes, designer, ny, nyc, brooklyn, shirts, jackets, pants, hoodies, wrist bands, hats, caps"><br />
 <br />
Description<br />
SEO description tags should be customized for each individual page of your site. Properly implemented description tags can mean the difference between a click for your website or your competitor&#8217;s. Description tags are often the first impression your users will get of your website and the first information search engines will dipslay regarding your brand. Don&#8217;t make them too long or the will be shortened by search engines. Try to use 132 characters or less:<br />
<meta name="description" content="Revolution clothing is a fresh urban fashion line geared toward the streetwise hipster. Our line features pants, shirts, hats, accessories and more..."><br />
 <br />
Page Title<br />
Your page title is very important as it is the headline that will be displayed by search engines. It is given alot of weight by many search algorithms so make it as descriptive as possible. Your title tag is placed in the <head> section of your HTML document. It will look something like this:<br />
 </p>
<p>Website URL<br />
Most search engines also give weight to search results where the search terms are included in your website URL. Try to purchase a URL that identifies your brand or at least your industry. Here are some examples.<br />
www.revolutionclothing.com<br />
www.revolution-clothing.com<br />
www.revolutionnyc.com<br />
www.revolutionnewyork.com<br />
 <br />
Multimedia Content<br />
Unknown to the owners and operators of many sites, especially those with heavy flash, video and multimedia content, is that many sites that are beautiful to look at and highly informational are also invisible to search engines! Search engines rely on text based information and can&#8217;t see the content of your videos, flash presentations or images. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s essential to code these multimedia features with search engine optimization in mind.<br />
If you are using flash in your site, It&#8217;s important to place some decriptive text in your page behind the flash content. Search engines can&#8217;t see the information that your flash file contains. If you make your site entirely in flash, it may appear to be a collection of blank pages to the search engine robots. Usually when embedding flash content into your site, you&#8217;ll see <object> and <embed> tags in the source code. Simply put your descriptive text before the</embed>tag for each flash file and that information will be invisible to users who have flash enabled but readable by search engines. This is a good practice because your users may not have flash installed or may be accessing your site from a mobile device without flash capabilities. They will also see the alternate text. Here&#8217;s an example:<br />
 <br />
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="32" height="32" title="My Flash"><param name="movie" value="myflash.swf" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><embed src="myflash.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="32" height="32"><br />
TYPE DESCRIPTION TEXT HERE. Try to copy as much of the text in the flash file here as possible. you can use HTML to<i> deliver alternate</i> content as well.</embed> <br />
XML Sitemap<br />
You should create XML and HTML sitemaps for your site. Sitemaps are used in the search engine ranking process to find relevant search terms throughout your site. A well defined sitemap will ensure higher search results as well as establish your site as a leader in your industry, making search engines and directories more likely to provide extra emphasis and higher priority to your site. There are many automated sitemap creators available free online. You don&#8217;t need to know XML to implement one. Google&#8217;s webmaster tools is an excellent free service that will walk you through the process of creating and installing an XML sitemap.<br />
 <br />
Meta robots<br />
Search engines use automated programed called &#8220;robots&#8221; to &#8220;crawl&#8221; your site for information. creating what&#8217;s known as a robots.txt file on your server will help search engines to index your site properly. create a textfile and name it robots.txt . Upload it to the root level of your ftp directory. You can read more about cusomizing a robots.txt file for various purposes, but a basic robots file that will tell search engines to index your entire site would look like this:<br />
 <br />
User-Agent: *<br />
Allow: /<br />
 <br />
W3C validation<br />
While not every web designer is a hand coding HTML expert, it&#8217;s imporant that your site is as error free as possible. You can check the validity of your code by using the free validator at http://www.w3c.org .<br />
 <br />
Search engine and Internet Directory submission<br />
While search engine submission isn&#8217;t as important as it once was, It&#8217;s still a good idea to manually submit your site to search engines and directories. Everywhere there is a link to your site on the internet means more traffic for your site. There are automated search engine submission software available for free. It can put a link to your site on hundreds if not thousands of websites and bring in that extra traffic to your website. Akin to a press release, these submissions let the world know that your site is open for business. It also provides link-backs from these sites generating more traffic and increasing the chances of a higher ranking for your site.<br />
 <br />
Internet Link seeding<br />
Related to Search engine submission above, this process involves posting messages and comments on various websites, bulletin boards, and blogs mentioning your services and providing a link to your site. These &#8220;seeds&#8221; generate additional traffic for your website as well as increasing your page ranking in search engines. The more your site is mentioned in different websites on the web, the higher your search rankings and traffic will be. Go to message boards and blogs related to your industry and comment on some of the articles. You can mention your site and provide a link. Many of these sites allow a &#8220;signature&#8221; to be attached to your messages. Use a link to your site or even a banner as your signature and you&#8217;ll generate even more traffic.<br />
 <br />
Register for a free Google Analytics account<br />
Sset up a free account with Google that allows access to website traffic and statistical information in incredible detail. Google Analytics can deliver near real-time statistics that can provide essential feedback for your site. Analytics answer all of the following questions on a daily basis and provide detailed reports and graphs.<br />
How many people visit my site?<br />
What geographic locations are they visiting from?<br />
What are the keywords and phrases visitors are using to find me?<br />
What sites are sending me the most traffic?<br />
What devices, operation systems, and browsers are my visitors using?<br />
What are the most visited pages and features of my site?<br />
There is no &#8220;magic bullet&#8221; for search engine optimization and no company can guarantee a number 1 position for a particular word or phrase. Those that make such dubious claims should be viewed with suspicion. A good SEO strategy requires hard work, expertise, and persistence. Because of the nature of the world wide web it can take weeks or even months for even the best SEO practices to bear fruit, but when they do the results are well worth the effort.</p>
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