Search engine optimisation for dummies - help?

nchch

Hi,
I know this is the $64,000,000 question but can anyone give some basic tips on how to improve search engine optimisation? You are probably all sick of this question but any help would be appreciated.

I'm fine with general PC operations but have no website management experience so can you please dumb it down as much as possible! My website is up and running and I look after the content management.

The website is www.heartsdesire.ie

Thanks in advance!

Trojan

Hi nchch,

I see noone's got around to answering your question as yet - here's some initial reading to get you started (note: my company's website):
Getting started with SEO.

That's not a bad place to start, although it is very far from comprehensive (I am writing a more comprehensive Getting Started post, more on that later).

If you have a read of that and then post up specific questions here as you meet them we'll do our best to answer for you.

Cheers!
Alastair.

nchch

That's great - I'll have a read through and be back if I need any more assistance.

Thanks a mil for your help.

glengara

I'd also put some relevant keyphrases into G.ie/G.co.uk and look at the top 10 results, particularly from the POV of content....

Qs

glengara wrote: »

I'd also put some relevant keyphrases into G.ie/G.co.uk and look at the top 10 results, particularly from the POV of content....

I'd do that more with titles and headers than anything else. Its a very quick easy way to start doing things right.

louie

Just a quick look at the website and already noticed few mistakes.

1. Page title - has to be unique and relevant to the page content.
2. Same for meta keywords + description which are non-existent in your page source (more for Yahoo and MSN SE, but it helps in Google as well)
3. No header tags on the page (h1-6) - you have an h3 but it's empty
4. Link title tag missing
5. Our Collection page starts with an h3 header where it should have been h1 and add some relevant text as well - how many people are looking for "Our Collection" phrase?
Try "Wedding Dress Collection"

Hope this help.

newestUser

I found this book useful:

http://www.amazon.com/Search-Engine-Optimization-Dummies-Peter/dp/0764567586

It probably doesn't contain anything that isn't freely online, but when I started investigating SEO, I found it very frustrating trawling through page after page of seemingly identical, spam-like pages I found through Google, none of which seemed to be authoritative or exhaustive enough for my liking. 25 euro well spent in my opinion, you'll learn all the basics, and won't waste time trawling through the web, re-reading stuff you already know in order to find info to fill in the gaps in your knowledge, etc.

I'd highly recommend it.

<edit> and it only costs about 12/13 euro through Amazon. Buy this book.

rizwan

remove all or make them nofollow external link
make 301 redirect to non www to www and to index page to /
make pages like contact us about us etc pages nofollow.
get inbound links by submitting to free directories

Skull_Collector

Hello,
I have a serious question.
Been someone who has trouble understanding all this "SEO" thing I found something really bothering.

Is there 2 types of seo? From what I gather now there seems to be a white method and a black method!!

Look here: www.blackhatseoebook.net

So what I figure is unless you are an expert at this seo, small timers like me might as well just give up? OR go the naughty ruote? :mad:

This would explain why I have not had much success!!

Please enlighten me as this has really dishearted me.

Thanks!

louie

Yes there are 2 type of SEO as you mentioned.
The second one might give u quick results but could also get you banned in SE.

One thing to remember when starting SEO - you need a lot of patients and I mean that.

Sully

Does the size of tags in SEO matter? As in, to long of a title tag or to many unique keywords?

With regards to the the <hX> tags - does it matter which you use? I keep reading <h1> is the way to go, but its hard to put a such a tag without making the place look awful.

aidan_walsh

You could always put the H1 tag in place and edit the size of the text in your CSS if its just the tag the search engine is looking for.

Sully

aidan_walsh wrote: »

You could always put the H1 tag in place and edit the size of the text in your CSS if its just the tag the search engine is looking for.

That is a good point. I assume it is just the tag rather then size?

louie

You can only optimise for a variation of keywords per page - too many and it looks like you are trying to spam the SE.

Let's see if I can explain to you why the H* tags matter.

You bought a paper and you are flicking through the pages than all of a sudden the "title" of an article catches your eye so you start reading it. Why?
Because the "title" (in our case is the H1 tag) is the one that tell you what's going to be inside that article - so the point is make it worth while and catchy.

A page shouldn't have more than 1 H1 tag and the title of the page should include some of the keywords used...

As aidan_walsh said - use CSS to make the tags blend with your design...

Sully

louie wrote: »

You can only optimise for a variation of keywords per page - too many and it looks like you are trying to spam the SE.

Let's see if I can explain to you why the H* tags matter.

You bought a paper and you are flicking through the pages than all of a sudden the "title" of an article catches your eye so you start reading it. Why?
Because the "title" (in our case is the H1 tag) is the one that tell you what's going to be inside that article - so the point is make it worth while and catchy.

A page shouldn't have more than 1 H1 tag and the title of the page should include some of the keywords used...

As aidan_walsh said - use CSS to make the tags blend with your design...

The problem isn't how the tag looks in the sense of style, its just very big. It stands out a bit to much on the page. Does SE want it big, or is it just the tag there after?

In particular im talking about the Discover Tramore site. I work hard on getting backlinks, but it can be tough getting the right places to do it and not having a big links page on our site!

louie

third time lucky....

use css for h* tags

h1{font-size:12px;}
h2,h3,h4,h5,h6{font-size:10px;}

search engines are looking for the tags they are robots and can see a web page the way we see it but pure text so all those fancy images you put up on the web are "invisible", the reason you make use of "alt" tag to describe the content...

Sully

I think your misunderstanding me. My bad for not explainig myself clearly.

I was aware of CSS changes to make the tags looks nicely. However, what I was asking was for SEO does the size of the tag matter or is it the presence of the tag that matters!

My question has been answered, I just wanted clarification.

loconor

Hi,
I have recently joined this forum hoping someone can help.

We recently launched our new product and website however as we're using a modx CMS and previously had a holding site under this domian it appears to be impossible to use the domain name without having it as a redirect from the original domain to a domain.name/ie.

I have ben working in SEO for a number of years but have never had to work with a redirecting site & I know for a fact that for SEO, redirects should be avoided at all costs.. how bad do you think this is?



Has anyone had the same problem & still managed to achieve top organic seo rankings?

Thanks,

loconor
CustomerMinds.com

irishpokeronlin

loconor wrote: »

I know for a fact that for SEO, redirects should be avoided at all costs

say what?