Search Engine Optimization: Ten Golden Rules For Beginners

By Leo Jackson (c) 2007

The following are the ten simple ways to optimize and increase traffic to your website. The guide is meant for those who intend to or are just starting out in Search Engine Optimization. It shows you all the basic things you need to know and what do to improve your rankings with the search engines and increase traffic to your website. No geek speak. No technical jargons. Just practical, easy to follow tips.

Directory Submission: Submit your site to online web directories. There are several directories you can list your site with. There are free ones as well as paid services. Directory registration can be a time-consuming elbow grease so the temptation is to go for a paid service whereby you pay a company or any other concern to help submit your site to all relevant directories. However you do not really need to shell out to get listed in the right directories with decent traffic and pagerank. The search engines have their own directory services and is a great place to start. Yahoo has its directory service www.dir.yahoo.com. Visit the site and submit your URL and feed in the category that matches the kind of website you run and / or your kind of business. It might take a while but your site will be listed. Getting listed in a directory like that offers all the exposure and presence a major player like Yahoo has to offer. Another directory to aim for is the Open Directory Project (dmoz). It does take some effort to get listed here but given the fact that this directory is highly valued by most of the big search engines, then it must be worth every effort. It can be found at www.dmoz.org.

Search Engine Registration:Register with the search engines. Registering with the search engines is introducing your website to them, inviting them to visit the site and help announce your existence to the world wide web. This can be explained simply without getting into geek mode. Forget about algorithms, spiders, crawlers and all that. In plain terms, the search engines on being registered with, will visit your website and index it. Hopefully they like what they see and they keep coming back and once someone searches for the contents they have found on your site, they point that person towards your site. So a sure way of being noticed by the search engines is simply to register with them. Of course Google should be your number one target here. Other prominent search engines you should register with include Alexa, Entireweb, Scrub The Web, Jayde, Info Tiger, Exactseek, Lookseek and Lifetips.

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Search Engine Optimization: Ten Golden Rules For Beginners

Leo Jackson is a London, UK based web entrepreneur and freelance journalist.