The bleak wind is wailing,

The bare boughs are sighing; the pale flowers are dying,

And the year

In her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,

Is lying…

Lamented the poet as the year was coming to a close. But for SEO-minded people like us, it is also the time to recapitulate what we have assimilated in terms of optimizing the visibility of our websites, especially the points that matter most.  However, these are listed below for the benefit of those who are concerned with search engine optimization process, greenhorn and pro alike.

Important Points in Regard to SEO:

Content

Google as well as other search engines are apt to crawl your website through the text you have provided. A website with a blank text will just convey the message that your site is empty. Therefore, you must make sure that you have appropriate content on your website and that content must be relevant, informative and prove interesting to the reader. Moreover, it must tell the search engine (and the reader) who you are and what your website is all about.

Keywords & Meta Tags

No matter how Google has downsized the importance of keywords in the recent past, these are still considered pretty important in search engine optimization process. As a matter of fact, keywords are the precise search terms  that are used by your target audience to close in on you. If you are thinking in terms of small and medium sized website, consider 3 -5 principal keywords that you may like to optimize. These can also be considered as terms that are relevant to your website and are prone to be searched to reach you. You can initially integrate these keywords into your content as naturally as you can think best. In fact, they should form a part of the natural flow of information. Also, the other thing is using headers to highlight the keywords. You can also use your keywords in your headers. However, what is most important is using the keywords in your Meta tags. Meta tags are usually added through the website builder settings that can be found at the top of the editor. Now is the time to introduce a title (up to 70 characters) and a bit of description (around 155 characters) , using the keywords you intend to promote.

Links

Links form an important part of search engine optimization, since a link indicating at you lets the search engine know you are there. The higher the number of links that point at you, higher becomes your chance of getting indexed quicker. Also, links from better ranking or more important websites are better and more purposeful than links from link farms or websites of lower importance. However, if you intend to take fullest advantage of the linking arrangement, use Anchor links. Anchor links are in fact links that are embedded organically into the text and so are always preferred. However, at this stage, the search engine will come to know that the target page carries information on links and website promotion and what is more, if lots of people starts clicking on that link, it will also reckon that the content on that page is upscale. This will naturally be instrumental in enhancing the ranking of the intended page.

Structure

The structure of your website indicates the way in which each page is connected to other pages as also the manner in which information circulates through your site. As of now, the most effective form of web structure is known as flat structure.  The benefit that this type of structure offers include easy reaching of each page on your website, as also with minimum number of clicks. This is not only proves suitable for the website users but also for the search engines. Incidentally, when your home page has the maximum page rank and equally good significance, then that merit automatically transcends down into all the pages. And that’s precisely why keeping as many pages closer to home as possible proves worthwhile.

Sitemaps, Directories and Submitting to The Search Engines

Of all the methods of getting your website along with all the pages indexed, the easiest perhaps entails the use of sitemaps. As the search engine crawls your website, having a sitemap enhances the likelihood of all the pages being crawled and indexed.Incidentally, getting listed in as many directories as possible will ensure more traffic for obvious reasons. Also, you can submit your website straight away to search engines. Although Yahoo and Google both have manual submission facilities, it does not guarantee that the crawler will index your website. However, chances are better this way.