I’ve decided to show you a few seo definitions before I will begin to write about full SEO techniques, tips and other tricks here. In my first post about Search Engine Optimization I showed you a short definition, but I haven’t told you what it is based on. What is a link? A reference in a hypertext document to another document or other resource (Really?!). It is the first thing you have to know - Google, Yahoo, MSN - every smart search engine is based on the links. They show search results in closely calculated sequence, based on number and quality of hypertext links for each site. SEO rule number one: the more (and better) sites are linking to you, the better place you have on the Search Engine Results Pages (in short - SERPS).

Let’s get it started from the code:

<a href=”http://www.siteadress.com” title=”description” rel=”follow”>Anchor Text</a>

Above you can see the code of an exemplary hypertext link. Below I’m describing how it works.

href="http://www.siteadress.com" - it’s link destination. In few words - just remember that http://www.domain.com and http://domain.com are two different addresses to two different sites. Second thing - if you put two links to the same address on one page, only first link will give SEO link power.

Anchor Text - this one is the link label, we call it Anchor Text. This is the most important thing in seo business. Why? Because all the text included in link label has a bearing on your place in the SERPS for the same keyterm in search engine. So, if you want to be on result pages for “blog tips” keyterm in Google, you have to get link label “blog tips”. Other issue - if you want to optimize for a bunch of queries, use various link labels for every keyterm. If you put all the keywords in one label (eg. “Paris Hilton blog music albums photos” you will only be first for “Paris Hilton blog music albums photos” keyterm. Yep, it’s wrong, no one will enter that phrase into searcher. Of course you can replace Anchor Text with images. That solution keeps link power for a site, but look - in fact it is totally useless for (directly?) SERPS conquering process.

Description - it’s a simple link title. It looks like that kind of link descripton doesn’t matter in search engine developers opinion, but why not to use it, if serch engine bots read it in fact? So, if you write a few words in link title, there is a chance to build a little contest! As you will read here in the future, contest is something really worth for SEO.

Rel parameter - usually people don’t use it. Default parameter is rel=”follow”, then search engine bot goes to address from link, and index it, perhaps. But if you add rel=”nofollow” code, it will be worthless for SEO. Some people think that it’s good to add “rel=nofollow” to any outgoing links on their sites, in order to increase its link power, but I think it’s such a stupid solution. In my own opinion everything sticks around the worth content and its good links proportion. I will write a little bit more about that issue in future.

This is not the webmaster course, so forgive me that I’m not writing about other link destinations, targets, classes, rollover effects, and other things. No way, this time I’m writing only about search engine optimization.