SEO - Boost your search engine rankings

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about how to get your website noticed by search engines - So that when people search the Web, your site has a better chance of appearing near the top.

The principle is simple. Most search engines pay attention to fresh content that doesn't look like spam.

They do this via a series of complex algorithms that rank websites on different dimensions. But each search engine does it differently. That's why, if you run the same search on Google and Yahoo, you won't get exactly the same results.

However, all search engines look for these factors:

• Content - Original content that is not repetitive. Google and other search engines don't rank spelling and grammar, but they do tend to dismiss websites that have very little content, or that have the same words repeated over and over throughout the website.
  
  
• Relevance: Think about keywords that people might search on in order to find your website. Use these keywords in the title and the body of your website, but don't over-use them - otherwise the search engine may assume that you are "stuffing" keywords just to artificially boost your ranking.
  
  
• Outgoing Links - Links should be related to the content. If they're not, the search engines will consider them random and spammy.
  
  
• Incoming Links - If a lot sites link to yours, search engines view your website as "popular" and give you higher ranking.
  
  
• Metatags - These are the words that define the title of your website and describe what your content is about. Metatags are like keywords, and should match the keywords that your potential audience would probably type into the search engine.
  
  For example, if your website is about overcoming shyness, your metatags might be: overcoming shyness, getting over shyness, social confidence, .... etc.
  
  You access your metatags on the actual files that are stored on your website's host. If you have a blog you can access the metatags from your blog's control panel or dashboard.
  

Each search engine gives different ranking to the above factors. Also, their algorithms change frequently. Thus, what was #1, 2 and 3 yesterday could be different today or tomorrow.

For more specifics on how to optimize your site for search engines, see their individual guidelines:
Google
Yahoo
Ask
Bing

More info is at SEOMoz.org.
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Picking a domain name? What to consider

Whether or not you already have a website, you should always buy a domain name that contains your own name. And you should get both .com and .net suffixes - e.g. FirstnameLastname.com, FirstnameLastname.net, FirstnameMiddle-initialLastname.com, etc.

That way no one else will be able to use it. You don't have to set up a website with your name in it, just own the domain names.

If you don't own those domains, other people could buy them. For example if there is someone else with your same first-and-last-name combination, they could grab the domain name and set up a porn site. Or, if you have enemies, they might buy your name as a domain and put up a parody site.

A popular source to check on domain name availability is godaddy.com.

What if your name is already taken? If your first and last name are common, e.g., John Johnson, you might find that someone else has grabbed the domain name. You can find out who owns the domain and offer to buy it from the person.

Or, use a variant:

• Try putting hyphens between your first and last name

• If you have a professional title like dr or doctor, or Ph.D., or MSW, or CPA, you can append those to the name and see if it's available that way.
  
  
• Or just add the word "the" to your name - e.g., thejanedoe.com

Other considerations when choosing a domain name:

1. Branding yourself: Have your name, company or specialty in your domain name. Your website is thus descriptive of who you are or what you do. If you wrote a book, it's a good idea to have a domain name containing part or all of the title.


2. Search-friendly: If you want your website to be easily found by search engines, use keywords in your domain name.

This is primarily for people who don't search for you by name, but who enter keywords for a specific service into search boxes.

For example, if you are a therapist in Detroit who works with families, you could get the domain: detroitfamilytherapist.com (which is still available as of this writing.)

Then, when someone searches for: family therapist detroit, your website will end up near the top of the search results.

To hyphenate? or not?

Some experts say that search engines can more easily "read" individual words in a string when they are separated by hyphens, so you might want to do this - e.g., detroit-family-therapist.com - especially if you have three or more words running together.

But then again, hyphens are often omitted by searchers.

In any case, it's a good idea to buy both the hyphenated and unhyphenated versions of your domain name. You can set the non-hyphenated name to be automatically redirected to the hyphenated version, which is your actual website. Thus, whether people type in detroitfamilytherapist.com or detroit-family-therapist.com, they'll end up at the same place, and you'll be more visible to the search engines.

When setting up a domain name containing keywords, consider what your intended audience might be searching for. There are synonyms and alternate forms for most keywords - so with a little creativity you'll probably find something that fits.

3. Easy: Your domain name should be easy to say, easy to spell, and easy to remember. And make sure that you don't inadvertently put together a combination of words that could be interpreted in more than one way- a popular example is therapist.com.

Keep in mind: Even though your domain name is important, it's not as critical as the CONTENT of your website. If you're using your website to market your practice, make sure you emphasize benefits for your audience. See my earlier blog post on this topic.

-- Pauline