SEO Tips 5 -8Essence SEO top ten tips

Tip 5 – Headings

Halfway into our top ten of handy SEO tips and we've reached the h tag, or headings tag as it is alternatively known. The purpose of these tags is to break up blocks of text with relevant headings and drawer the eye to particular paragraphs that the user may find useful. h1 holds the most weight and therefore should ideally contain the particular keyword being targeted for that page. Make sure your headings are used correctly and remain relevant to the content that follows. Simply stuffing them with keywords or applying them in the wrong context runs the risk of triggering one of the many spam filters the search engines use to weed out those who might be unlawfully trying to influence their rankings.

Tip 6 – Canonisation

Google have a thing they call the 'canonisation' of web pages. It relates to your domain name and the variations thereon. Google will treat yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com as being two separate domains, even though they point to the same content. Likewise with www.yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.co.uk and any other form of domain you may have registered (.org, .net, etc.) that will show identical content. The 'canonisation' process is when Google chooses one of these domains above the others to be the representative page in its index. This may not be your domain of choice - for instance, the page may have fewer inbound links. To remedy this potential problem, implement a 301 redirect so that all additional domains are forwarded to the one domain of your choosing.

Tip 7 – Duplicate Content

In the words of Basil Fawlty this may seem like  “stating the bleedin' obvious”, but don't steal your content or rip great chunks of it from somebody else's web pages. Be unique, write it yourself – or failing that hire somebody else to write it for you. Duplicated content can be detected and punishments duly dispensed.

Tip 8 – The Code

It pays to make life as easy as possible for the search engines. If you keep them happy then there's less chance of your pages triggering one of the many spam filters. Likewise, be as accommodating as possible to the search engine spiders when they're indexing your pages. Make sure the poor blighters don't get tangled up in reams of inaccessible code by:

• Keeping your mark-up as lean as possible.
• Using CSS and storing it in an external file.
• Storing any large chunks of JavaScript in an external file.
• Avoiding Flash animations where possible, and certainly not building your entire website using Flash.
• Ensuring there are text links for the purpose of navigation throughout the site.
• NOT BUILDING YOUR WEB PAGES WITH THE NOW ALL-BUT-OBSOLETE FRAMES LAYOUT!!!