Search Engine Optimization in A Basic Way

Domain Name

If you don’t have a domain name yet, pick one that contains your main keyword.

The ideal would be to have a domain like “mainkeyword.com”, but it is going to be very hard to find it available nowadays. You can try with “yourmainkeyword.com” or “mainkeyword4you.com”, though.

People tend to trust (and remember) .com domains better. If you really can’t find the right fit in a .com, you can still go with a .net, if you want.

Having your main keyword in your domain name will help you because:

1. websites with the main keyword in their domain name tend to perform better
2. the keyword will be shown in bold in the search results, thus making your listing stand out
3. since it is important to have your keyword in the anchor text (clickable text) of the links pointing to your website, a keyword-rich domain will help you even in those cases where people link to you with your domain as the link anchor text.

Do you already have a domain name? Even if it doesn’t contain your main keyword, you can still benefit from it. Google tends to like older domains, because it feels those are “real businesses”, that are there to stay. It is not uncommon to see remarkable ranking improvements with just some on-site optimization, in these cases. Just follow the tips I am about to give you.

Navigation

The technology you use for your website navigation has an impact on how many pages the search engine will index. Search engines can only follow standard html links.

If your website navigation is based on a flash animation, the search engines won’t be able to spider your pages. The same holds true for Javascript.

Page Names

It doesn’t matter the technology you use to create your pages. Google will index .htm, .asp, .php, .aspx pages and many other formats (including word documents and pdf files, for example).

The way you name your pages, though, can have an influence on your rankings. Having keywords in your page names can help you from an SEO perspective.

Instead of “yourwebsite.com/page.php?id=bluewidgets”, use something like “yourwebsite.com/blue-widgets.php”. Separate the words in the page name with a dash, so that Google knows where every word starts and ends.