My experiments with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

May 23, 2008 @ 2:53 pm · Filed under Technology

Search Engine Optimisation seems to be the hot topic of the moment for every website and online business.

After having done some search, I have found the basic elements that make a website rise up like a bubble through the ocean of websites on the Internet in a Search Engine.

But the internal factors seem to be only half the story. One also needs to look at the external factors.

Blog, blog and blog some more. That seems to be the way to go.

Become a member of websites like LinkedIn and give some good answers to LinkedIn questions.

Contribute some good quality content to websites that are constantly looking for content. And believe me, there are hundreds of websites that are looking for quality content.

Anything from as simple as how to setup a SubVersion Repository on Linux to how to create a Web Application using JSF and JBoss Seam seems to attract a lot of attention.

Luckily I have also found some websites like www.vipsem.com that allow you to quickly check your website keywords, description, etc. and give you a good idea of how the website would fare with Search Engines.

Tricky stuff. Driving me up the wall. But then, Internet is here to stay. So are search engines. And there is no shortcut to popularity.

Hardwork folks…hardwork and more hardwork seems to be the way to go. Or rather, smart hardwork.

My SEO guidelines:

  • Ensure that the website is XHTML compliant.
  • Choose a meaningful title. For example, my title is “Ashish Kulkarni”.
  • Choose relevant keywords and ensure they appear in the content. For example, my keywords are Ashish Kulkarni, Ashish, Kulkarni, etc.
  • Choose a description that is relevant to the content.
  • Refrain from using irrelevant keywords. For example, if I had a keyword like “Google” or “iPhone” in my keywords, even though they are popular keywords, they would not help improve my search engine ranking.
  • Ensure that the content of your website has a good density of the keywords and that they appear in the content naturally.
  • Check your signature on blogs and forums. Ensure that the URL of your website appears every time you post a message or a comment.

My favourite SEO tools/resources:

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