Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

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How to rank your site at the top of Google, Yahoo, MsnBot, Lycos, Advalvas, HOTBOT, MetaCrawler ...

Tips from Dasdan:

1. Write clean code: follow the W3C recommendations and standards. Keep in mind every tag that opens must close also empty ones like br ,hr.

2. Separate your content, layout and scripting. (HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript).

3. Avoid JavaScript codeforking, and iritating JavaScipt links.

4. Optimize your "alt"-tags. Keep in mind search engines are like text-browsers. They can not read images. Use the alt attribute to the img tag to describe the purpose of each image. Use the alt= “ ” attribute to describe meaningless images like placeholders. Use alt attributes that convey meaning to your visitors, rather than meaning to you and your colleagues. Don't forget to close your img tag.

5. Avoid flash for displaying contents, search engines can not look into flash files. Use flash like you use images. Using flash for a webshop seems really stupid to me.

6. Use the correct DOCTYPE

7. Optimize your meta tags: Make sure to set the "content-language", "content-type", "Keywords", "description" and "robots" in the meta tags. Try to Choose balanced and unique keywords and descriptions.
Don't forget to set a long and descriptive "title" for your site. Analyzing the referers in your server access logs from time to time can help to find out how people have found your site.

8. Make a robots.txt file in the root of your site.
Take a look at robotstxt.org

9. Validate your code using the W3C-validator

If you want to know more about Validation and webstandards you should read the book "Designing with web standards"
Jeffrey Zeldman, New Riders ISBN: 0-7357-1201-8
Zeldman.com

10. Make sure your webserver (scripting language) is sending out the correct and optimized Headers

11. Put some interesting content on your site, and update frequently.

12. Get your site listed on the most popular search engines like yahoo, Google, hotbot, Lycos, advalvas, metacrawler, ... You should not rely on programs submitting your site to 4000 search engines at a time, but your should subscribe manually. Make sure your site is working correctly before submitting. Follow strictly the guidelines provided and don't try to cheat by submitting several times.

13. Just be patient, SEO is not happening in one click or week. It can take up weeks, months before search engines are crawling your site.

14. Try to get your site listed on other popular sites and link back to them.

15. Don't use relative url's, you can write a wrapper to output absolute url's.

16. Off course you can hire a SEO-specialist like me to do it for you

Good luck and don't forget to share your tips

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