Search Engine Optimization tips

Some key ways to ensure that you receive higher listing in the search engines is to follow these rules;

- Ensure that you do not have any pages that return 404 messages
- Remove all pages that you do not sure anymore. That means if you have some single test pages that do not link to the main site this can have an adverse affect on your rankings. If you want to setup test pages then setup a test website and host in a separate directory. Not many people know about this one but through the testing I have done it seems to be the case.
- Ensure that your site has a sitemap. Preferably one that has been linked to from your home page. This will allow the search engine spider to find all page easily for your website
- Try not to use encoded URLS for you dynamic pages. Thy to make the URL make sense or include keywords
- Include all of your JavaScript and CSS in external pages. This keeps your code clean and helps the spider to index the page. Another trick with this is to include the keywords as some of the CSS class names that you use. This means that the page will have plenty of references to your specific keywords
- Most importantly, make sure that your page is well formatted.

There are plenty of other tips so keep checking back as future posts will include some more tips for you.