SEO quickie for the impatient newbie webmaster

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If you are starting your first website, you probably have come across the term "search engine optimization" or SEO for short. While SEO is important to your website design, you may not want to take weeks to learn many of the specifics before getting your website up and running. It's recommended to optimize your website for the search engines before going live. However, many people don't and don't intend to in the future. Here's some advice on a few basics of search engine optimization you should employ before launching any website:

Most important SEO advice to a new webmaster

Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools, and add an xml sitemap so Google can find deeper pages on your site that the crawler may have missed. Validate your sitemap using one of the services Google lists in their help files there. Make Webmaster Tools your home away from home. In your free time, read all the help files associated with each tool. Once you are familiar with Webmaster Tools, you should also sign up for Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Center.

SEO quickie advice about images

• Don't use images for headlines and/or topics. Search engines cannot see the text in an image. Sure they can read alt tags, but it's better to structure your website content using heading tags (h1-h6). Use h1 for main topic titles within your content, and h2 and lower for sub topics.
• Don't use images for links, especially for your website navigation. The same reasons apply for this advice as for the headlines advice. You want your website to allow easy access for search engines to crawl your content. Text-based navigation ensures there are no issues crawling your pages.
• If you use images on a page, and the images are relevant to the content topic, make sure you use a relevant keyword in your ALT tag as well.

SEO quickie advice about keywords and keyword phrases

• If you are going to link to your pages in your content (and of course you should), don't use anchor text like "click here". Use keywords that describe the page you are linking to as the anchor text.
• Use relevant keywords in your topic headings. Use relevant keywords in your title tags. Use relevant keywords in your meta description tag. Use relevant keywords in your content. But don't spam your keywords. Try to select 1-2 keyword phrases per page, and have someone else read your content for that page to see if it sounds unnatural to them. Or take a break for a day and review the page yourself.

SEO quickie advice about things search engines don't like

• Don't use a complete flash website design. Search engines will not read your flash files and therefore will not index your site completely. Flash templates that are flash hybrids can work well, as they allow you to have some animation on your site if you find that necessary, and you can still add a text-based form of navigation, such as in your header, so that your site pages are easily accessible to the search engines.
• Don't have duplicate content on your website. This includes things like page titles, meta tag descriptions, and print- friendly page versions.
• Use only one H1 elelment on a page. H2-H6 can be repeated and should be, if necessary, but most forms of content won't progress beyond using an H3 element.
• Don't use link submission software.
• Don't link to sites that have content that might make your mother uncomfortable.
• SE's don't like stagnant websites. Try to add new, quality content as often as you can. If you run out of ideas on what to add for new content, some webmaster resources may help spur your creativity.

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