Search Engine Optimization (SEO) from Wikipedia
I found a few tips on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) white hat techniques from Wikipedia.
There are a few elements that are missing, such as keyword density and incoming links, but these few SEO tips are pretty essential and pretty handy for beginners.
- Using unique and relevant title to name each page.
- Editing web pages to replace vague wording with specific terminology relevant to the subject of the page, and that the audiences that the site was developed for will expect to see on the pages, and will search with to find the page.
- Increasing the amount of unique content on the site.
- Writing quality content for the website visitors instead of the search engines.
- Using a reasonably-sized, accurate description meta tag without excessive use of keywords, exclamation marks or off topic terms.
- Ensuring that all pages are accessible via anchor tag hyperlinks, and not only via Java, Javascript or Macromedia Flash applications or meta refresh redirection; this can be done through the use of text-based links in site navigation and also via a page listing all the contents of the site (a site map).
- Allowing search engine spiders to crawl pages without having to accept session IDs or cookies.
- Developing “link bait” strategies. High quality websites that offer interesting content or novel features tend to accumulate large numbers of backlinks.
- Participating in a web ring with other quality websites.
- Writing useful, informational articles under a Creative Commons or other open source license, in exchange for attribution to the author by hyperlink.
Text in bold are the SEO techniques that I have been using and proved to be effective from my personal experience.