SEO Tools & Tips

SEO Tips from Google.

Accurately describe the page's content
Choose a title that effectively communicates the topic of the page's content.
Avoid: choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page using default or vague titles like "Untitled" or "New Page 1".

Create unique title tags for each page
Each of your pages should ideally have a unique title tag, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site.
Avoid: using a single title tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages.

Use brief, but descriptive titles
Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too long, Google will show only a portion of it in the search result.
Avoid: using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags.

Accurately summarize the page's content
Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.
Avoid: writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page using generic descriptions like "This is a web page" or "Page about baseball cards" filling the description with only keywords copying and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag.

 Use unique descriptions for each page
Having a different description meta tag for each page helps both users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain (e.g. searches using the site: operator). If your site has thousands or even millions of pages, hand-crafting description meta tags probably isn't feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate description meta tags based on each page's content.
Avoid: using a single description meta tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages.

Use words in URLs
URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure are friendlier for visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be more willing to link to them.
Avoid: using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs choosing generic page names like "page1.html" using excessive keywords like"baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.htm".

 Provide one version of a URL to reach a document
To prevent users from linking to one version of a URL and others linking to a different version (this could split the reputation of that content between the URLs), focus on using and referring to one URL in the structure and internal linking of your pages. If you do find that people are accessing the same content through multiple URLs, setting up a 301 redirect from non-preferred URLs to the dominant URL is a good solution for this. You may also use canonical URL or use the rel="canonical" link element if you cannot redirect.
Avoid: having pages from subdomains and the root directory access the same content - e.g. "domain.com/page.htm" and "sub.domain.com/page.htm" using odd capitalization of URLs.

Create a simple directory structure
Use a directory structure that organizes your content well and makes it easy for visitors to know where they're at on your site. Try using your directory structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.
Avoid: having deep nesting of subdirectories like ".../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/page.html" using directory names that have no relation to the content in them.

Create a naturally flowing hierarchy
Make it as easy as possible for users to go from general content to the more specific content they want on your site. Add navigation pages when it makes sense and effectively work these into your internal link structure.
Avoid: creating complex webs of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site to every other page going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (so that it takes twenty clicks).

Use mostly text for navigation
Controlling most of the navigation from page to page on your site through text links makes it easier for search engines to crawl and understand your site. Many users also prefer this over other approaches, especially on some devices that might not handle Flash or JavaScript.
Avoid: having a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or animations - many, but not all, search engines can discover such links on a site, but if a user can reach all pages on a site via normal text links, this will improve the accessibility of your site; more on.

Put an HTML site map page on your site, and use an XML Sitemap file
A simple site map page with links to all of the pages or the most important pages (if you have hundreds or thousands) on your site can be useful. Creating an XML Sitemap file for your site helps ensure that search engines discover the pages on your site.
Avoid: letting your HTML site map page become out of date with broken links creating an HTML site map that simply lists pages without organizing them, for example by subject.

Have a useful 404 page
Users will occasionally come to a page that doesn't exist on your site, either by following a broken link or typing in the wrong URL. Having a custom 404 page that kindly guides users back to a working page on your site can greatly improve a user's experience. Your 404 page should probably have a link back to your root page and could also provide links to popular or related content on your site. Google provides a 404 widget that you can embed in your 404 page to automatically populate it with many useful features. You can also use Google Webmaster Tools to find the sources of URLs causing "not found" errors.
Avoid: allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your webserver is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent pages are requested)  providing only a vague message like "Not found", "404", or no 404 page at all using a design for your 404 pages that isn't consistent with the rest of your site.

Write easy-to-read text
Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow.
Avoid: writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes  embedding text in images for textual content - users may want to copy and paste the text and search engines can't read it.

Stay organized around the topic
It's always beneficial to organize your content so that visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends. Breaking your content up into logical chunks or divisions helps users find the content they want faster.
Avoid: dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation.

Create fresh, unique content
New content will not only keep your existing visitor base coming back, but also bring in new visitors. Avoid: rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site - more on duplicate content.

Create content primarily for your users, not search engines
Designing your site around your visitors' needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.
Avoid: Inserting numerous unnecessary keywords aimed at search engines but are annoying or nonsensical to users having blocks of text like "frequent misspellings used to reach this page" that add little value for users deceptively hiding text from users, but displaying it to search engines.

Choose descriptive text
The anchor text you use for a link should provide at least a basic idea of what the page linked to is about.
Avoid: writing generic anchor text like "page", "article", or "click here"  using text that is off-topic or has no relation to the content of the page linked to using the page's URL as the anchor text in most cases - although there are certainly legitimate uses of this, such as promoting or referencing a new website's address.

Write concise text
Aim for short but descriptive text-usually a few words or a short phrase.
Avoid: writing long anchor text, such as a lengthy sentence or short paragraph of text.

Format links so they're easy to spot
Make it easy for users to distinguish between regular text and the anchor text of your links. Your content becomes less useful if users miss the links or accidentally click them.
Avoid: using CSS or text styling that make links look just like regular text.

Think about anchor text for internal links too
You may usually think about linking in terms of pointing to outside websites, but paying more attention to the anchor text used for internal links can help users and Google navigate your site better.
Avoid: using excessively keyword-filled or lengthy anchor text just for search engines creating unnecessary links that don't help with the user's navigation of the site.

Use brief, but descriptive file names and alt text
Like many of the other parts of the page targeted for optimization, file names and alt text (for ASCII languages) are best when they're short, but descriptive.
Avoid: using generic file names like "image1.jpg", "pic.gif", "1.jpg" when possible—some sites with thousands of images might consider automating the naming of images writing extremely lengthy file names stuffing keywords into alt text or copying and pasting entire sentences.

Supply alt text when using images as links
If you do decide to use an image as a link, filling out its alt text helps Google understand more about the page you're linking to. Imagine that you're writing anchor text for a text link.
Avoid: writing excessively long alt text that would be considered spammy using only image links for your site's navigation.

Supply an Image Sitemap file
An Image Sitemap file can provide Googlebot with more information about the images found on your site. Its structure is similar to the XML Sitemap file for your web pages.

Imagine you're writing an outline
Similar to writing an outline for a large paper, put some thought into what the main points and sub-points of the content on the page will be and decide where to use heading tags appropriately.
Avoid: placing text in heading tags that wouldn't be helpful in defining the structure of the page using heading tags where other tags like <em> and <strong> may be more appropriate erratically moving from one heading tag size to another.

Use headings sparingly across the page
Use heading tags where it makes sense. Too many heading tags on a page can make it hard for users to scan the content and determine where one topic ends and another begins.
Avoid: excessively using heading tags throughout the page putting all of the page's text into a heading tag using heading tags only for styling text and not presenting structure.

Use more secure methods for sensitive content
You shouldn't feel comfortable using robots.txt to block sensitive or confidential material. One reason is that search engines could still reference the URLs you block (showing just the URL, no title or snippet) if there happen to be links to those URLs somewhere on the Internet (like referrer logs). Also, non-compliant or rogue search engines that don't acknowledge the Robots Exclusion Standard could disobey the instructions of your robots.txt. Finally, a curious user could examine the directories or subdirectories in your robots.txt file and guess the URL of the content that you don't want seen. Encrypting the content or password-protecting it with .htaccess are more secure alternatives.
Avoid: allowing search result-like pages to be crawled - users dislike leaving one search result page and landing on another search result page that doesn't add significant value for them allowing URLs created as a result of proxy services to be crawled.

Know about social media sites
Site’s built around user interaction and sharing have made it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content.
Avoid: attempting to promote each new, small piece of content you create; go for big, interesting items involving your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the top of these services.

 Reach out to those in your site's related community
Chances are, there are a number of sites that cover topic areas similar to yours. Opening up communication with these sites is usually beneficial. Hot topics in your niche or community could spark additional ideas for content or building a good community resource.
Avoid: spamming link requests out to all sites related to your topic area  purchasing links from another site with the aim of getting PageRank instead of traffic.