1. Title Tag
Near the very
top of a web site’s source code you’ll find various meta tags — the standard
ones being the Title, Description and Keyword tags. The title tag is
technically not a meta tag, though it is commonly associated with them. The title
tag plays such a large role in the indexing of your web site, that it is
considered the most important of the three.
A page title is
the first thing a search engine will look at when determining just what the
particular page is about. It is also the first thing potential visitors will
see when looking at your search engine listing.
It’s important
to include a keyword or two in the title tag — but don’t go overboard – you
don’t want to do what’s known as “keyword stuffing” which does nothing but make
your web site look like spam. Most people will include either the company name,
or title of the particular page here, as well.
2. Meta Tags
There are two primary meta tags in
terms of SEO — the description and the keyword tag. It’s debatable whether the
search engines use the description tag as far as ranking your results. However
it is one of the more important tags because it is listed in your search result
— it is what users read when your link comes up and what makes them decide
whether or not to click on your link.
Be sure to
include a few relevant keywords in this tag, but don’t stuff it with keywords
either. The description tag should read like a sentence — not a keyword list.
Due to “keyword
stuffing” many search engines now completely disregard the keyword tag. It is
no longer nearly as important as it was years ago, however it doesn’t hurt to
include them in your source code.
When creating your
keyword list, you’ll want to think of the specific terms people will type in
when searching for a site like yours. Just don’t go overboard — too many
duplicates are not a good thing (as in “web designer” “web designers” “custom
web designer” “html web designer” “your state here web designer” – you get the
idea). Those are all basically the same, so pick one or two variations at the
most and move onto the next keyword.
3. Proper Use of Heading Tags
This is a very
important element to consider when writing out your site copy. Use of heading
tags helps users, web browsers and search engines alike know where the major
key points of your copy are.
Your main page
title should use the <h1> tag — this shows what your page is about. Use
of additional tags, such as <h2> and <h3> are equally important by
helping to break down your copy. For one, you’ll see a visual break in the
text. But as far as the search engines are concerned, it will automatically
know what your topics are on a page. The various heading tags give a priority
to the content and help index your site properly.
4. Alt Attributes on Images
Putting alt attributes on your images
actually serves two purposes. In terms of SEO, putting a brief yet descriptive
alt attribute along with your image, places additional relevant text to your
source code that the search engines can see when indexing your site. The more
relevant text on your page the better chance you have of achieving higher
search engine rankings.
In addition,
including image alt attributes help the visually impaired who access web sites
using a screen reader. They can’t see the image, but with a descriptive alt
attribute, they will be able to know what your image is.
5. Title Attributes on Links
Including title
attributes on links is another important step that any good web site will have.
That’s the little “tool tip” that pops up when you place your mouse over a
link. These are especially important for image links, but equally useful for
text links.
As a note, you
should use descriptive text for your links. “Click here” doesn’t really tell a
person – or more importantly, the search engines — what the link is. At the
very least put a title tag that will explain that “Click Here” really means
“Web Design Portfolio” for example. Better yet – make the main link text
something like “View my web design portfolio” — this will give some value to
the link showing that the resulting page is relevant to searches for
portfolio’s.
6. XML Sitemap
My Last Post
referenced the sitemaps used by web visitors to help them navigate through your
site themselves. However, there’s another version — XML sitemaps — that are
used by the search engines in order to index through your site, as well.
This list of
ALL pages / posts / etc. of your site also includes information such as the
date the page was last modified, as well as a priority number of what you feel
the most important pages of your sites are. All elements that help the search
engines properly find and link to all content of your site.
7. Relevant Content
Having content
relevant to your main page or site topic is perhaps the most important SEO
aspect of a page. You can put all the keywords you want in the meta tags and
alt image tags, etc — but if the actual readable text on the page is not
relevant to the target keywords, it ends up basically being a futile attempt.
While it is
important to include as many keywords in your page copy as possible, it is
equally as important for it to read well and make sense. I’m sure we’ve all
seen keyword stuffed pages written by SEO companies that honestly don’t make
much sense from the reader’s point of view.
When creating
your site copy, just write naturally, explaining whatever information you’re
discussing. The key is to make it relevant, and to have it make sense to the
reader. Even if you trick the search engines into thinking your page is great —
when a potential customer arrives at the site and can’t make heads or tails of
your information and it just feels spammy to them — you can bet they’ll be
clicking on the next web site within a matter of seconds.
8. Link Building
We’ve probably
all heard of Google Page Rank — it seems to be every web site owner’s dream to
have as high a page rank as possible. While the algorithm for determining page
rank encompasses many elements, and is constantly changing, one item is the
number of links pointing to your web site.
Now, you’ll
want to steer clear of link farms and other spammy attempts at getting links to
your site. However there are many reputable and niche directory sites that you
can use to submit your web site, or specific blog articles to.
With genuine
content — especially if you have a blog — you’ll be able to generate links with
other web sites and blogs, as well. It’s somewhat of a give and take, in that
if you link out to other sites, you’ll find sites linking back to you —
and hopefully see your page rank going up, as well!
9. Social Media
Although
technically not SEO, Social Media is such a growing factor in getting your web
site noticed, that it’s an important element to include in your plan.
Social media
ranges from social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn — to social
bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon and many more. There is
a lot of relationship building involved, but as you build your own networks and
build quality content on your web site or blog, you’ll see traffic to your web
site increasing, as well.
As with any
relationship, it is a give and take. Don’t just expect to join a site like
Twitter for the pure sake of pushing your content. That just won’t fly — your
true intentions will stick out like a sore thumb and do nothing but turn people
off.
Even if you are
on the site purely for networking reasons, the key is to make friends. Help out
members of your network if they ask for a “retweet” or Digg, give helpful
advice if asked, etc. You’ll see the same in return.
If you write a
great post and have built meaningful relationships with peers in your
niche, you’ll often find that friends will submit your posts and give you votes
on the social bookmarking sites. The more votes you receive, the more likely
your post is to be noticed by others and shared around, often resulting in
additional link backs from other blogs, etc.
10. A Few SEO Don’ts — Flash and Splash
Along with any list of Do’s come the
Don’ts. As far as SEO is concerned, two of these items are splash pages (often
consisting of a flash animation) and all flash web sites.
Yes, flash is
pretty! Full flash web sites can actually be amazing to look at — their own bit
of interactive artwork. But unfortunately the search engines don’t get along
well with Flash. Although there is talk of possible advancement in this area,
for the most part the search engines cannot read Flash.
All that great
content that you wrote for your site will not be seen by the search engines if
it’s embedded into a Flash web site. As far as the search engines are
concerned, your all flash web site might as well be invisible. And if the
search engines can’t see your site content, a good chunk of potential customers
will miss out on what you have to offer, too.
Equally as
“pointless” are splash pages. Once very popular, the splash page should no
longer be an important feature of any site. While splash pages used to serve as
an introduction into a web site (often with a flash animation), it is no longer
seen as helpful, and often times might actually annoy visitors.
For one — it’s
an extra click to get into your content. Worse is when you don’t give a “skip
intro” option or set of links into your main site content — because you’re
essentially forcing your visitors to sit through the full animation. If you’re
lucky, this will only annoy them… if not — they’ll just leave without giving
your main web site a shot. And without an html link pointing into your site,
the search engines have no way to continue either (unless you made use of a
sitemap.xml file — but still…)
A good
alternative to both issues is to make use of a flash header. There’s no problem
to include a flash animation at the top of your main site, or as a feature
within the content area, etc. Because this is an addition to your web site, as
opposed to a full separate element.
