Sun 10 Aug 2008
DIY SEO For Your Website
Blurb by ShaunAloha! Subscribe TODAY for FREE Website Promotion Tips from Hobo!
SEO TIPSOK So that’s the end of July, and the end of our sort-of-beginners-guide to on-site and on-page seo FAQ. Is there more?
Of course there’s more, but I wanted the tips in July to sort of stand apart - that is, you could read these (about) 30 posts and go away and create a successful site. I deliberately steered clear of things that might be a bit gray, and I assume you’ve done your keyword research - I might go into that shortly. I just wanted to stay largely onsite seo for the duration of the tutorial, and lay down actual seo advice you could use.
I knocked them out with no little planning - so forgive me if the advice is a bit all over the place. I will be checking the information again, after a break. Feel free to comment
SEO FAQ
You may want to read our What Is SEO and of course, get to know each search engine specific guidelines for inclusion.
- Optimise Page Titles
- SEO Meta Descriptions
- Optimal Keyword Meta Tags
- Robots Metatag
- H1 Heading Tags
- How Many Words To Rank
- Optimal Keyword Density
- Link Internal To Relevant Pages
- Link Out To Related Sites
- Redirect Non WWW To WWW, Google
- Optimize ALT Tags
- Search Engine Friendly URLs
- Keywords In Bold & Italic
- Absolute / Relative URLS
- Directories / Files
- PHP, HTML or ASP
- Valid HTML & CSS
- 301 Old Pages
- On-Site Duplicate Content Issues
- Fix Broken Links
- XML Sitemaps
- Nofollow Internal Links
- Only The First Link Counts?
- Link To Important Pages
- Bonus - Put your keywords early in page copy - like high up in the code.
- Bonus 2 - Read Google Webmaster Guidelines
There’s a few things I won’t go into on this site.
Unlike some, I won’t discuss blackhat seo on this blog at the moment at least. Nor promote specific tactics that would cause another site issues even if I do find a social network that with a few posts you can swamp Google results. I won’t talk about specific on-site seo test I might do - as Google could easily give me the information they wanted (Tin Foil Hat On of course). I have a few processes and an order of optimisation I’m not quite ready to post yet, but I will probably.
I’ve got loads of little tests going on in various corners of the web testing one thing or another - I love that sort of thing. I a not looking how to break Google, more how to work with it. I’ll share the info once I get the results but hey it’s free advice, worth every penny paid. I’ve certainly tried to keep readers right.
I don’t really surmise a lot on this blog - not as much as I would like to anyways.
Hope you enjoyed the posts and thought they were of use - I’m taking a small break for a while to go play in the social networks - see you about
Now, you should be linkbuilding or linkbaiting
Subscribe!
36 Shouts
We close old posts on the Hobo blog, but you can link to the article from your own blog, and get a trackback link to your website from the post.

Thanks so much.. so informative. i enjoyed reading through each section. Helps put things clearly into perspective.
Thanks again!
Michelle
Shout Out by Michelle Tukachinsky — July 31, 2008 @ 6:02 pm
Thanks Michelle
Shout Out by Shaun — August 1, 2008 @ 12:31 am
This is the best compilation of easy-to-implement SEO advice I’ve seen online Hobo. So thanks for taking the time to publish it for the whole World to use freely.
Shout Out by dawnprofies — August 4, 2008 @ 12:14 pm
Great DIY SEO Guide
Shout Out by Diva Beach — August 4, 2008 @ 12:42 pm
[...] already posted about Hobo’s free SEO advice. But July is over, and now the entire SEO package is available for everyone’s own website [...]
Cited By by Hobo: 30 days & 26 ways to expert SEO — August 4, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
Thank you for sharing some of your SEO secrets..^^ I will keep them in mind and try them out for myself..^^
Shout Out by Internet Marketing Joy — August 5, 2008 @ 6:10 pm
Michelle,
Sphunn, good information.
~ Jim
Shout Out by Jim Gaudet — August 5, 2008 @ 8:02 pm
[...] Best SEO Links I’ve Seen TOday Posted on August 5, 2008 by hatchergroup Looking for some basic Search Engine Optimization tips? Look no further. [...]
Cited By by Best SEO Links I’ve Seen TOday « Online Outreach for NonProfits and Foundations — August 5, 2008 @ 8:03 pm
JImbo….. are you a bot?
Shout Out by Shaun — August 5, 2008 @ 8:44 pm
Shaun,
No, I am not a bot. I saw this article on Sphinn and thought I would comment. I never comments on my blog, so I thought I would try to send out a few.
I like the layout of this site,
~ Jim
Shout Out by Jim Gaudet — August 5, 2008 @ 10:35 pm
Hey Jim - apologies! LOL - Thanks very much for commenting - hope you found the tutorial useful.
Shout Out by Shaun — August 5, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
Using this list is quite powerful.. i moved my site from 1574 to 30 with just onpage optimization..
Shout Out by Traffic2MyPage.com — August 6, 2008 @ 2:23 am
Really like this guide. I have my own that might be helpful to some:
http://www.jaankanellis.com/seo-where-do-i-begin/
Shout Out by Jaan Kanellis — August 6, 2008 @ 6:49 am
This is great stuff. Don’t get me wrong. However, this is more like “how to become an SEO expert”, not “DIY SEO”.
If a small biz owner or internal marketing person is going to do SEO, I think they should focus on keyword research, content creation and landing page creation. Then, gradualy learn the rest as they start to see results. This list of things to do and learn makes it seem very daunting.
Shout Out by peter caputa — August 6, 2008 @ 8:31 pm
@ Jaan cheers
@ Peter yes I agree wholeheartedly “keyword research, content creation and landing page creation” are what people should be focusing on (apart from some discovery linkbuilding).
These tips where meant to offer an insight to onsite seo issues seo beginners should and or should not obsess about. I don’t think they are that advanced, but advanced seo for me might be just knowing what not to do - most of the time.
Thanks for the comment
Shout Out by Shaun — August 6, 2008 @ 8:55 pm
Wow! What a load of information! Thank you so much!
Shout Out by DIY Website Design FAQ — August 8, 2008 @ 12:41 pm
Wow! Your blog is valuable. It contains beneficial information that is helpful for everyone. Thanks for your best tips and suggestions on SEO.
Shout Out by Jackson — August 11, 2008 @ 11:25 am
What a great list, this is seriously impressive. Most SEO blogs don’t give this much information. Thank you for talking about the no follow link also, I got alot of useful information.
Shout Out by Joey Martini — August 12, 2008 @ 9:18 pm
Thanks, this was very informative as I am new to this.
Shout Out by techie — August 16, 2008 @ 5:44 am
Thank you for sharing some of your SEO secrets.
Shout Out by Nickle — August 16, 2008 @ 6:20 pm
I just found your website and bookmarked it in delicious. There is a ton of good information here for me to learn from.
Shout Out by Utah Web Design — August 21, 2008 @ 6:39 pm
[...] Scottish marketing company Hobo spent the month of July posting a SEO tip each day. [...]
Cited By by DIY Search Engine Optimisation — August 24, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
Great post.
Shout Out by Pragmites — August 26, 2008 @ 1:46 pm
great posts
i learned a lot
Shout Out by serdar — August 26, 2008 @ 2:27 pm
this is by far one of the best explanations i’ve read, its simple and easy to implement, very easy to comprehend.
Great Job,
Cheers,
Mandy Krowovsky
Shout Out by SEO Consultant — September 5, 2008 @ 5:51 pm
great post for seo tips
Shout Out by francisgho — September 8, 2008 @ 1:51 pm
very nice list…saves loads of reading by summarising the core seo
Shout Out by Atti - Green Forest Design — September 10, 2008 @ 5:23 pm
Well put together a list of SEO tips that sure will help SEOs. Well done mate.
Shout Out by iPhone Australia — September 19, 2008 @ 5:40 pm
This is a very good guide to some essential SEO guidlines Shaun.
I would like you to have included a few more items, like key phrase research, you mention keywords a lot in your blog, and I have always found that keyphrase is more accurate. good keyphrase research is criticle to a good SEO campaign. All too often people spend lots of time optimising websites for terms nobody is searching for and wonder why they get no traffic. My tip is - do the research ! find out the terms people search for before optimising your website.
a good (free) starting point is google adwords keyword research tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Anchor Text - the text in inbound links to your website is also one of the most powerful SEO tools, get your keyphrase built into the anchor text of inbound links. This is probably the most important SEO tool, hence the inportance of your choice of URL in the first instance, which you did mention in your blog.
Lastly is my top tip - Nich Marketing, when you do your keyphrase research, you inevitably find phrases that lots of people use, but don’t ignore the smaller phrases. These are the nich terms, and optimising for these will often bring your true customer to your website. For instance, if you sell clocks, you will be competing against many well optimised websites all selling clocks, this will be difficult and get you nowhere, however look at you stock ! if you see that you have a vast array of clocks - cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, ect. My advice is to optimise each of your pages for these nich terms. This will bring in a host of real customers for your products.
Shout Out by Business Web Design — October 7, 2008 @ 9:35 am
perfect articles. im starting to read all now.
thanks,
Shout Out by Seo Uzmanı — October 19, 2008 @ 3:07 pm
[...] TIP 23One of the more interesting discussions in the seo community of late has been trying to determine which links Google counts as links on pages on your site. Some say the link Google finds higher in the code, is the link Google will ‘count’, if there are two links on a page going to the same page. [...]
Cited By by Does Only The First Link Count In Google? | Hobo — October 29, 2008 @ 10:13 am
[...] DIY SEO For Your Website [...]
Cited By by The Most Useful Posts On This Blog (Probably) | Hobo — November 13, 2008 @ 4:14 am
[...] Subscribe TODAY for FREE Website Promotion Tips from Hobo!SEO TIPS I thought I would elaborate on my thinking about seo “heat” and try to unify how I [...]
Cited By by Visualising Neighbourhood & Website Structure | Hobo — November 13, 2008 @ 4:46 am
[...] Subscribe TODAY for FREE Website Promotion Tips from Hobo!TIP 10I can’t even say this word properly - Canonicalization. Does your site have canonicalization [...]
Cited By by Do I Need To Redirect Non WWW To WWW, Google? | Hobo — November 13, 2008 @ 3:21 pm
thanks hobo-web for another great article. 5 star rating
Shout Out by wigwam — November 16, 2008 @ 12:28 pm
[...] Subscribe TODAY for FREE Website Promotion Tips from Hobo!SEO TIPS Search Engine Optimisation - Don’t make simple [...]
Cited By by 10 SEO Tips - What Not To Do! | Hobo — November 17, 2008 @ 2:15 am