In the final installment of this 3-part series, I will outline five more important things to consider when thinking about search engine optimization. View Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

#11 Link to your domain.

Make sure your link to your home page is set to your domain, and not to index.html. If you link to index.html, you are splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.

#12 Alt tags.

Spiders do not have eyes, meaning they cannot see what images you have on your site. Attach an alt tag to each image you have on your site with a description of the picture.

#13 Use social networking sites.

Facebook, Digg, Twitter, and other social networking sites have more power than you can probably  imagine. Don’t be surprised if your new site is showing up in search engines through a social networking site before your own domain. They are also a great way to increase traffic.

#14 XML sitemaps.

Spiders like it when you make it easy for them, so offer an XML sitemap that displays all of your sites pages. If you’re using Wordpress, Google XML Sitemaps plugin is a must. “Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.” It is also useful to create an HTML version of your sitemap with a list of each page on your site.

#15 SEO tools.

Check your Google page rank, domain popularity, backlinks, keyword density, and countless other useful statistics in this Complete List of the Best SEO-Tools.

Final Thoughts

Search Engine Optimization is not just about what things you do, but also about what you don’t do. Shay Howe wrote an excellent article about the Do’s and Don’ts about SEO, you should check it out at letscounthedays.