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I get about 7 or 8 email spam a week to my domain accounts promising that so-and-so can make my search rankings much higher for only $xxxx.  Of course this stuff is so much snake oil it’s not even funny.  I can help you improve your Search Engine ranking with 10 easy tips.  Best of all, this is completely free!

So, for the robots out there, check this out:

Top 10 Free Search Engine Optimization Tips by Brian Garside

Consider that a preview tip right there.  That title not only improves the ranking for my name, but will also raise the profile of this article in search engines.

1. Page titles are a must – The content inside of your <title> tags is some of the highest ranked content there.  Make sure it’s filled out with relevant keywords to your current content.  On my site you’ll notice that the title of the article always comes first, then my name/URL.
2. Make sure you have relevant meta tags –Many people think the meta tags aren’t important, but they are.  One of the advantages of meta tags is they are at the top of the document, which means they will get crawled first.
3. Titles of links are important – You want to title your links with words targeted for what you want high search scores for.  Pages are ranked based on the number of links to that content.
4. Create a sitemap – This isn’t the old school “All links on one page” sitemap (although those are good too), this is an XML file that contains all of the links that were crawled on your site.  This is an easy way to let the bots crawl your site.
5. Use heading tags to indicate hierarchy – the “H” titles are very important, and hierarchy is inherited, anything with an H1 is most important, while H6 is least.  You can use these to get some good SEO for author names, sub-titles, etc.  Conversely you don’t want to use H titles for stuff that you repeat on every page as those likely aren’t relevant for search engines.
6. Splash Pages are instant failing grades – Every click that you put in front of a search engine is one less chance that content will be crawled, it also decreases the importance that a search engine will attribute to your content.  If you create a splash page, a search bot has to move through that link before getting to your inner page, which then links to the content which has stuff you want to have crawled.  Search engines also give more prominence to the content which is on the very first page of a website.
7. On the web, 10,000 words are worth a picture – Words inside of pictures are invisible to search engines.  You need words for the search engines to crawl, and the words on ads and such are usually the exact words that you want to target.  If you DO have to use an image, make sure you define an text for the alt tags.
8. Inline CSS and Javascript is a no-no – Search engines only crawl a certain amount of content, if they have to go through line after line of code, before getting to your words, this will result in fewer hits of your targeted content.
9. Keep scripts near the bottom of your page – much like the previous suggestion, you don’t want to force the bots to crawl code which doesn’t have your targeted message in it.
10. Validate your HTML – Not as important as the other suggestions I’ve made here, but important none-the-less.  Valid HTML makes it easier for search bots to crawl your site.  Easier crawling will result in more search engine hits for your site.