Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in search engine’s results. There are hundreds of guidelines for an effective search engine listing. Though the process of SEO, targets to only affect a search engine listing and not to list it aggressively. For aggressively listing a website on search engines, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is required. Majority of the websites of internet say almost 99% of the websites on internet prefer to have their website rank at a good level on Search Engines. For the SEO and SEM are certainly the only alternatives.

As mentioned that there are hundreds of rules and guidelines for effective search engine optimization, though some of the most common factors are being described below:

• Proper & Interlinked Website Navigation: The website should have proper links and should be properly interlinked throughout following either a certain hierarchy of links or global menus. Any irregularity in the navigation of the website may result in prohibiting the website to be indexed by search engine crawlers on the Internet.
• Minimized use of JavaScript based Web Navigation: The JavaScript based navigation should be avoided. If used, then the usage should be minimized as well as optimized (if possible). As an alternative, a static text link sitemap is also published on the website, to allow full website access by the search engine spiders.
• Avoid Frames While Developing / Designing of Site: Websites which are built entirely using frames or have some part built in frames certainly looks better but actually is very bad in context of SEO. These websites have to struggle hard in order to get ranked in search engine as the content in the frames could not be easily published to the search engines.
• Dynamic Generated URL’S: As a matter of fact, the URL’s with query string featuring characters such as %,&? etc. are much harder to be indexed by the search engines.
• HTML Code Validation: HTML code validation is a very good practice in context of SEO friendliness of a website as it helps in increasing search engine visibility, ranking of sites and also reduces website indexing problem meanwhile.
• Page Loading Speed: Page loading speed plays an important role in increasing popularity of a website among the search engines.
• Alt Tag Placement: The Search Engine bots cannot read an image. However they can certainly read the Alt Tag of an image and can be indexed.
• Canonical URL Check: A canonical problem occur when a website have both version of active URL’s i.e. http://www.abc.com & http://abc.com. Search engine treats these URL’s as different URL’s with same content. Issues like these reduce the genuineness of the website from point of view of a search engine thus causing adverse effects on the listing.
• Title and Meta Tag: Title and Meta tags of any web page convey the basic information about that webpage & also play vital role in the SEO by improvising the ranking of the website in search engines. Many a time’s common title and meta tags are used for all the pages of the website. This leaves an adverse effect on the SEO of the website. Title and Meta Tags are not only helpful in website ranking but they also play a vital role in giving directions to the search engines regarding the relevant keywords.
• Heading Tags (H1 to H6): Search engines give more emphasis on the texts which are placed in between H1 to H6 heading tags. The relevant text is generally indexed more frequently.
• Dynamic Sitemap Generation: Sitemaps are one of the most important measures to improve the website listing on a search engine. Thu the sitemap for even dynamic sites should be updated on a regular basis when a new post/blog/product/page is added on website.
• 404 Error / Broken Links: Broken links on any website not only gives negative feedback to the visitors but also has a bad impact on SEO of the site.
• Browser Compatibility: If a website is not compatible with all the major browsers such as IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, it increases the bounce rate of the website in turn leaving adverse effect over the SEO of the website.
• Optimized Quality Content: The content of a website plays a crucial role in listing a website. The content of the website should include as many keywords as possible and yet should be meaningful for an effective listing in search engines.
• Minimized use of tables and increased use Cascading Style Sheets: This is also an important factor while considering on page SEO for a website.

By Nick
For Owebest