The object of every webmaster is to get their site listed in a search engine, but what do you do to make that happen? There is so much competition out there.
Here are some ideas and things I've noticed with my websites. First of all Google likes urls that don't have question marks. Sure, we've all seen those type of urls in Google, but they are less likely to appear than short static looking urls. Add that to the fact that search engines love updated content, and what do you think might come in handy? Well, a message board is a great place to start. Seo-board.com has a free forum that's easy to install and has search engine friendly urls. Your visitors help you create content, and the search engine friendly urls help get you more visitors through search engines. A site that doesn't have some way for it's visitors to interact doesn't have nearly as many repeat visitors anyway.
Next, scatter some images around to give your visitors something to look at besides just text. Use images that relate to your subject. If your site is about cars put images of automobiles everywhere. You can get a lot of traffic through search engine image sections. It's not as targeted as subject searches, but any traffic is better than none.
Start a links directory with link trades that relate in content to your site. Link trades aren't as popular as they used to be, but you have to start somewhere, and if nobody links to you then forget it. Just make sure the sites you trade links with share common subject matter as much as possible. Use correct title tags in your directory as you should for your entire site. Never repeat the same title tag on every single page. If a page has car links, then the title tag should read "car links", "car sites", or something similar not "buy acme because we care".
Never repeat exact content from one of your sites on another site. Posting articles you get from free article sites seems to be ok with the search engines as long as you have unique content surrounding the article text like menus, images, links, etc.
Don't be afraid to start out a site with just a few pages. You don't really have to start out with a huge site all at once. Search engine robots like to come back to sites that continually update so it just makes sense to roll out your site as you create it. One thing to keep in mind though, if you are exchanging links, don't expect webmasters to trade with you if your site has broken links or if there is nothing there content wise. You shouldn't have broken links regardless. Search engines aren't too receptive to links that go nowhere.
There a lot of things to keep in mind. I've noticed time and time again sites that are well done visually, but seem to care less about search engine optimization. You can't focus all your attention of the search engines, but it makes a big difference in the success of your site to keep them in mind as you go along creating content for your web site.
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