Anilrgowda

From a WebProNews email I received recently:

Important SEO Tips Everyone Should Know
Chris Richardson | Staff Writer

During the Interactive Site Review session at the 2007 Las Vegas PubCon, various site owners submitted their site for the panel to pick apart. The panel consisted of heavy hitters like Matt Cutts from Google, Tim Mayer from Yahoo, Greg Boser from WebGuerrilla, and Danny Sullivan.

While some of the sites they reviewed may have been lacking in certain departments, the knowledge the panel bestowed is quite valuable for SEOers of all types. What follows is are some quotes and paraphrases that go a long way to demonstrating what it is search engines are looking for:

- each page of your site is an entry point, optimize (title tags, keyphrases) for what each page targets - Greg

- strive for quality links over quantity links - the entire panel

- if you are targeting your site geographically, get links from local entities (Chamber of Commerce, local directories)

- unique content is important (this and link bait are the prevailing themes of the Las Vegas PubCon)

- if you can get into the top 3 of Google Local, you will be on the front page of Google's standard search if the query is geographically based... - Danny Sullivan

- when optimizing for Google Local, navigate to the Google Local Business Center - this was suggested by Matt as a source to assist with being indexed by Google Local's index as well as a place to claim your business, similar to Technorati's blog claim function.

- one of the sites reviewed was a real estate site... during this portion, Greg revealed some interesting information about how this industry markets to the search industry: the real estate industry conducts SEO much like they did in 98, it's a bad field in reference to SEO...and while this may not be a tip per se, it's good information to be aware of especially if you are considering this industry...

- ditch javascript menus altogether... they are a red flag to ranking algos - Boser

- template-based sites may not rank well because they appear alike to the crawlers... - Tim Mayer and Matt Cutts both iterated this thought.

- Session IDs urls need to be blocked from crawlers because of duplicate content issues (don't serve session ids to bots)... this was emphasized by Matt who said: "session ids can be poison for crawlers"

- if your site sells manufactured products, don't use manufacturer copy... use your own descriptions - this was also stated by Heather Lloyd-Martin during the effective web copy session

- there's no good use for 302 redirects, ever - the entire panel

- blog about your product or target area, this provide so much of the original content the search engines are looking for - paraphrased from Matt Cutts

This last point plays into the whole link bait theory that was incredibly prominent during this conference (I cannot count the number of times I heard this phrase...). Keep these tips and ideas in mind when you are conducting any SEO or SEM-related process. They will serve you well.