Vital Basics: The Eternal SEO Queries We regularly receive emails f rom SEO MixTour readers and Web CEO users asking for advice on var ious SEO and SEM issues ranging f rom minor t ips and tr icks to some major issues such as the reasons for a search penalty. These are mainly backbone SEO questions which we cal l Vital Basics of SEO. I f you are a novice search engine optimizer, please f irst read the previous issues entit led Search Engines’ Index Quest ions and Keyword Optimizat ion Quest ions, and go on reading today’s issue.

Should I have my main keyword in the URL?

Yes. The best thing is a domain name that includes your main keyword. However, even subdomains, directory and page f i le names matter . I t is always better to have your main keyword in the URL, unless you have a long-keyword-phrase-that-wil l- look-spammy.com. The keyword in the URL wil l not only tel l search engines that your keyword relates to the topic you are concentrat ing on, but wil l help you get keyword-r ich l ink texts (some people st i l l l ink using the domain name as the l ink text). Besides the highl ighted keyword in the URL on the SERPs, may posit ively inf luence the cl ick through rate.

Are Meta tags stil l important?

Not that important. Last September Google announced that they do not use the Meta Keywords tag in web ranking. But the Meta Descr ipt ion tag is of ten used as the text for Google search results snippets, so why not making it descr ipt ive and attract ive? One more Meta tag that is used by search engines is a Robots Meta tag ; you may read more about it in the SEO MixTour issue devoted to search engines’ crawlers.

Is it OK to use both image alt text and image title?

Yes, especial ly if you are using them to help your vis itors and not to stuff keywords. Image Alt text is used to provide expl ic it information on an image for those who are unable to see it ; the Image Alt text should descr ibe what the image is about. Image t it les provide addit ional information; it is a t it le, so it should be short and catchy. Of course, you would l ike to use your keywords in both of them.

Are automatic site submissions to search engines harmful?

Rather ‘No’ than ‘Yes’ . The major search engines won’t ban your site because of them, but do not expect automatic submissions to improve your search engine rankings. I t is much better to submit your website’s Sitemap to the major search engines.

How soon will my rankings improve after I submit to search engines?

There is no direct dependence between your s ite’s submission to search engines and good rankings. Gett ing your s ite indexed just means that search engines know about your site and wil l return next t ime to crawl it and update their l ist ing of your site. To rank wel l, you should opt imize your pages. This involves content optimizat ion for the targeted keywords, improvement of a site’s l ink popularity (gett ing inbound l inks to your site), ensuring site qual ity (absence of broken l inks and other ser ious HTML errors prevent ing SE robots f rom crawling and indexing, search engine- and vis itor-f r iendly design), promotion in social media, and advert is ing.

How do search engines know that you are the author of the unique content?

This question is usual ly asked when you think about a duplicate content f i l ter that the major search engines apply. Let ’s see what happens when a search engine f inds several pages with identical content. I ts algorithms must select the page that offers the best information required and of fer it to a searcher. How does it decide which page is better? Here the authority of the site and the number of backlinks point ing to the page come into play. So your task is not to just insist that you are the f irst to publ ish an art ic le, but to prove to search engines that your page is relevant and authoritat ive enough to be l isted in SERPs higher than others who only copied it .

You may read more about the country-specif ic s ites and dupl icate content f i l ters and about the usage of borrowed content in the previous SEO MixTour issues.