Lately, many have been asking about SEO. With the economy in a little slump of sorts, I am assuming people are for one feeling the pinch and realizing the selling value of the internet. The end of the age of bad flash sites and complex tables is in sight! For many years, big companies have been playing the pragmatic SEO game, but now the average joe is finally jumping on the bandwagon and willing to invest in SEO and SEM. In my opinion this is big, because small businesses are willing to give up valuable revenue to the relatively uncertain territory of SEO and SEM.To accompany my recent observation of those with small businesses I have compiled a brief list of essential SEO tips:

1. If you use Flash, please give alternate content. Sure Google can “spider flash” now, but do you really trust the outcome? And how is any search ever going to get high quality content from this?
2. Keep your markup clean.
3. Use heading tags well. So don’t overuse/abuse h1′s and h2′s – I usually use each once on a page.
4. Use markup tags for their intended purpose.
5. Make sure page titles are used and content rich.
6. Use keywords and descriptions when you have something important to say about that page. Just like your momma told you, if don’t have anything good to say don’t say it all.
7. Use URL rewriting. If you are an SEO, in my opinion, URL rewriting should be your best friend. In strong accordance, be familiar with HTTP/1.1 status codes and know how to use them.
8. Use and be familiar with robots.txt, the X-Robots-Tag, the “rel” attribute, and sitemap.xml files.
9. Use webmaster tools from one or all of the major players (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft).
10. Use Google Analytics at the very least. For the most accurate metrics, combine Google Analytics with server analytics like AWStats, and other tools.

For the more advanced readers, please feel free to add to or suggest alternatives. And for the rest, this list is not meant to be a be all and end all, but – just like one’s wedding day – a mere beginning on a long journey.Now for the shameless plug…If you need some assistance implementing an SEO plan, drop Vovéo or myself a line, we will be glad to help

Tags: SEM, SEO, Tips
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