Never underestimate the power of SEO. It’s the most effective & healthy way of marketing online. Although Google is constantly changing its algorithm of search ranking, but some basic rules for SEO still works at least now. Here is several tips from my own experience when I was in charge of the promotion for Tucia.

Commitment:

Pay money and extend your domain expiration time to 5 or 10 years later, so that Google won’t easily put you into the list of temporary spamming & cheating sites.

80/20 Rule:

20% of your keywords bring 80% of traffic. Give up all the other keywords except these 20% most important ones. 3~5 keywords would be the best. Focus on them.

Forget 6%:

Adjust your content, link’s TITLE, image’s ALT and everything else to high light your keywords. Don’t be afraid of too many keywords (forget about the 6% density limit), because you’ll never have enough high keywords density in a readable text.

I’ve seen a very stupid personal site with lousy page TITLE, DESCRIPTION, META, and shitty codes, but standing right on the top of Google search results. The only reason is ultra-high keyword density which I can never achieve when I try to make visitor enjoy reading it at the same time, for God’s sake.

Avoid Duplication:

Every page must have a different TITLE and DESCRIPTION and also different content text, unless you want Google to put you into the list of trash-producing sites.

Cross-Level Consistency:

You need to make Google believe that you page is highly related to the keywords, which can be simply done by putting the same text in different levels of the same page. Such as link TITLE, link TEXT, image ALT. For example, this text link to abc.htm:

<a href=”/abc.htm” title=”keyword1-keyword2″>keyword1-keyword2</a>

and this image link to abc.htm

<a href=”/abc.htm” title=”keyword1-keyword2″><img src=”/abc.jpg”  alt=”keyword1-keyword2″ /></a>

Remember you have to put keyword1-keyword2 in the page TITLE of abc.htm

IF you can change the page file name of abc.htm to keyword1-keyword2.htm, that will be best:

<a href=”/keyword1-keyword2.htm” title=”keyword1-keyword2″><img src=”/keyword1-keyword2/keyword1-keyword2.jpg”  alt=”keyword1-keyword2″ /></a>

Social Media Effect:

I found it by chance that a high rank in social media (e.g. Digg & del.icio.us) will prominently make your rank higher in Google too. I send Tucia to a low-cost social media marketing service provider called Naifenqian.com, who helped me to get 600 diggs & 300 del.icio.us bookmarkers in a short time. In 72 hours, I found Tucia climbed to Google’s 2nd page from 5th page with the same search keywords.

Use Great Tools:

http://www.the-escape.co.uk/tools/pageanalyzer/

http://www.searchengine-analysis.com/

http://website.grader.com/

永远不要忽视SEO，因为它是最稳健最有效的营销方式，如果有条件，最好请个专人来负责每天的SEO工作。以下是我近几个月对Tucia国际版做SEO的一些笔记，从简单开始说起，越往后越复杂：

显示诚意：

把域名续费5年以上：域名有效期越长，越表明你重视这个网站，被google判为投机作弊的几率也越小，这个是我最近刚从一个国外SEO博客发现的，之前完全不知道连这个都是SEO。。。。汗

80/20原则：

20%的重量级关键字可以带来80%的流量，因此专攻那20%的重要关键字即可，其他的必须放弃。 这跟打仗一样，要看清主战场，不可妄想十多个关键词都在google排前面，以3~5个为宜

密度为王：

调整网页里的文字内容、链接的title属性、图片的alt标记等，让你希望突出的关键字出现在每个角落。有人说太多了不好，6%最合适，但我做过测试，10%也没关系，能多点就多点。Tucia国际版 的最大对手，就是一个极不专业的个人小网站，它的代码极不规范、title、meta、css一塌糊涂，但它就是排google第一位，唯一的原因就是极高的内容关键字密度。而Tucia目前因为UI设计和用户体验的关系，不敢乱放这么高密度的关键字。

避免重复：

虽然重点的两三个关键字要经常出现，但不能很多页都使用完全一样的title，keywords, description，最好每一页都不一样，哪怕就是简单调整单词的顺序也行。大量的重复会让google认为你的网站里有很多垃圾内容。

跨层次一致：

链接的title属性、图片的alt标记、以及链接过去的网页的标题，三者要尽可能一致，越一致，google越相信这个网页与关键字很有关系。比如这个文字链接：

<a href=”/abc.htm” title=”keyword1-keyword2″>keyword1-keyword2</a>

以及这个图片链接：

<a href=”/abc.htm” title=”keyword1-keyword2″><img src=”/abc.jpg”  alt=”keyword1-keyword2″ /></a>

链接过去的/abc.htm的网页标题也最好是keyword1-keyword2

如果能把目录名、文件名里都带上关键字就最好，比如：

<a href=”/keyword1-keyword2.htm” title=”keyword1-keyword2″><img src=”/keyword1-keyword2/keyword1-keyword2.jpg”  alt=”keyword1-keyword2″ /></a>

长线效应：

一个偶然的机会发现，通过奶粉钱做了几次Digg和del.icio.us营销之后，google的关键字排名有显著提高（核心关键字下Tucia从第5页排到了第2页），因此我相信google也会在背后参考社会化媒体里的排名。比如Tucia现在已经在Digg里被顶了600多次，在del.icio.us里也被收藏了三百多次，在某些热门tag下Tucia已排到了全球前几位（比如 photo, design, photography, photoshop 等），也许google会认为Tucia很受欢迎，而给予更高的排名。这个结论现在没有充足的证据支持，但是几次不同网站的试验结果完全一致，很难说只是巧合。不过长线效应需要日积月累，很难一日达成。

顺便推荐最好用的三个在线免费SEO工具，只适用于英文：

http://www.the-escape.co.uk/tools/pageanalyzer/
http://www.searchengine-analysis.com/
http://website.grader.com/