SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

  1. All your optimization decisions should be based on what is best for your users. Search engine optimization is really about making your content visible to search engines and the same principles of accessibility for users works for search engines as well.
  2. The spiders that crawl the Web are looking for essentially the same things you are looking for -- CONTENT. The key to great search engine ratings is matching the language on your site site to the language that your users will be searching for. You do this by using key words. Key word rich content is what the spiders use to rank your site when users search, along with links.
  3. The most important keywords are the ones that your users are likely to be using to search for content similar to your own. For instance, if I were looking for a recipe for cream puffs, I might search on the following terms:
    • cream puffs
    • recipes
    • dessert recipes
    • puff pastry
    • vanilla cream filling
    • French desserts
    • French vanilla
    • Profiteroles
    • Profiterol
    • choux pastry
    • puff shell
    • cream filling
    • creme filling

    and on and on...

    These words and any combination are all excellent choices. It is your best interest as the content developer for this site to use them liberally both in your text, your image alt tags, your link labels and equally important, use the key words in your file names.

    Here are some "best practices" to keep in mind as your go forward:

     

  4. Give every page in your site a unique (and accurate!) page title. 
    The page title will likely show up in the search results. For pages deep in your site, you might want to include the business name, but be sure that the title represents the main focus of the page's content. Be brief, but descriptive.

     

  5. Make use of the description meta tag.
    <meta> -- there several kinds of meta tags. Meta tags contain information about the content of an HTML page. For a long time they were considered the magic bullet for great search engine ratings, and were consequently seriously abused. Search engines have improved and meta tags are considerably less important these days than they used to be. Still, they are worth understanding and using.


    Meta tags come in two flavors: the "http-equiv" and "name". The type is specified as an attribute of the meta tag like this:

    <meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en" />

    -OR-

    <meta name="keywords" content="cream puffs, profiteroles, profiterol, french vanilla cream filling, ream filling, creme filling, desserts, deserts, dessert recipes" />


    In both cases the content attribute is used to expand the meaning of the type of meta tag specified.

    The "http-equiv" type has many variations. This type of meta tag is used to give the browser more information about the document it is being asked to display. It can include information about how to handle the different mime types, it can be used to automatically re-direct the browser to a new page, refresh (reload) a page at a specified interval, or as shown above, what language to expect the page to be in. The default meta tag that Dreamweaver uses tells the browser to expect an HTML document of a text type using the ISO approved character set. It looks like this:

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />

    A meta tag that is a "name" type can have five possibilities. They are:

    • Description contains a simple, keyword-rich description of the page contents.
    • Keywords contains a list of possible keywords that users might use to search for this page. It could even include common misspellings of those same words.
    • Author is used to identify the author of the web page, frequently used in conjunction with the copyright meta tag.
    • Copyright includes the copyright information for the web page.
    • Robots are used to shield a page from search engines. The content attribute of this type can take two values: "noindex", to prevent the search engines from indexing this page or "nofollow" to prevent the search engines from following any of the links.

    The description meta tag is particularly important because a search engine like Google might use them as snippets in the search results with the relevant words bolded. When writing the description meta tags, accurately describe the page's content and write a unique description for every page.

     

  6. Write "Friendly" URLs
    Use descriptive words when naming your folders and organizing your site. Obviously, file names are not the place to write long sentences, but within reason, if a user can remember the URL to a page and it makes sense to them, then it will probably be attractive to a search engine as well.

    Ideally you want other sites to link to your pages. If your URLs contain keywords then their links will give you and extra little bump. Every time they use a text link to your site, you become just that much more visible through the use of key words in the URL. Avoid lengthy, complicated URLs and generic names.

    Keep your site structure as simple (if possible) and logically organized. Again, give the directories names that are relevant. Also, stay away from odd capitalization. Users find them hard to remember.

    Consider what might happen if the user removes part of your URL. Users like to navigate in unexpected ways.

     

  7. Create Easy Navigation
    The easier it is for users to find what they are looking for in your site, the easier it is for search engines, too. Organize your pages into a naturally flowing hierarchy. Keep the number of choices on a single page manageable. Describe where the links go. Don't be afraid to add navigation pages if they clarify the site's structure. They are much better than going overboard with elaborate navigational bars that try to link every single page in a site to every other. Favor using text links when possible. Use breadcrumb trails to clarify the user's path through your site.

     

  8. Include a Sitemap
    One of the simplest thing you can do help users (and spiders) to find your pages is to include a site map that lists every page in your site. If you have hundreds of thousands of pages, just include the most important ones. These can be tedious to make and even more tedious to maintain, but there are tools that can help automate the process.

    Be sure your site maps are organized by category to reflect the structure of your site. And keep your site map up to date! Link rot is not a pretty thing. Be sure that there is a link to every page in your site somewhere on the site that is in live HTML text. In other words, the links need to be in HTML and not dynamically generated by some fancy AJAX coding which is inaccessible to the spiders.

     

  9. Focus on Content and Services
    If your content is compelling and valuable people will notice. They will link to you from their blogs, send your URL out in email, in forums and more.

    Keep your writing easy to read and fresh. Avoid stale language. Break your content up into manageable chunks. Let the user delve in as deep or as shallow as they want. Keep text out of your images.

    Use lots of keywords in your text. Keyword rich text is what the search engines are looking for and help the user find what they need. Google provides a useful keyword search tool. You can find it here:

    As much as possible you want your content to be fresh, unique and exclusive.

     

  10.  Use Descriptive, Concise Links

    Search engines LOVE links. They especially love links that are labeled for what they link to. It's even better if the file name is also a key word. In our example above it would be nice if the term "cream puffs" was in the URL. For example:

    allrecipes/desserts/creampuffs.html

    - OR -

    allrecipes/creampuffs/frenchvanilla.html

    Format your links so that they look "linky" -- make them visible.

     

  11. Use h Tags
    Using h tags helps establish the contents hierarchy. Use them consistently and correctly, but don't overdo it.

     

  12. Use keywords in Image's File Names and Alt Attributes
    The content within an image is unreadable by search engines and unavailable to visitors using a screen reader, but the name and alt attribute offer you a way to use them to get a bump in your ratings. Alt attributes become particularly important when you are using the image as a link. Keep your file names and alt attributes short and pithy. It also helps to keep the images in their own folder.

     

  13. Google Analytics

    So how do you know what your users are searching for? How do you know if they found what they wanted? In other words, how do you figure out whether you're reaching your market or not? In a word: Analytics. You need to be able to capture information about what your users are doing on your site. To do that you need to be able to access the web server logs.

    There are lots of great tools available, for a wide range of cost and services offered. Some of the more ones out there are Webtrends, Webalizer, and Urchin.

    Urchin was bought by Google as now available to you free. It is a great tool and ridiculously easy to install. Here's the link:

  14. Google Website Optimizer is a tool that tests your website's content for accessibility. Using it will help you design more effective sites that do a better job for your users and get better search engine rankings.

    You can find it at: https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/splash?hl=en

  15. And finally -- be sure to check out Google's Webmaster Guidelines and Webmaster Tools

  16.  More is better. The more pages you have the more likely you are to hit all the search terms your users could possibly be using. More pages means more links, more URLs, more title tags, more key word rich content, more spider food

  17.  Including a blog on your site that is constantly being updated is a great way to improve your search engine ratings. Blogs provide lots of new content, new pages, and new links

  18.  Search Engine No-nos, or How to Get Thrown Out of the Game

There's no doubt about it -- search engines are smart. They have learned how to spot a cheater. Here are some of the more common cheats that can get your site in big trouble with the search engines:

  • Illegible links and text -- links and text have to be visible to the average, healthy human eye. That means the search engines will take a dim view of styles that match the color of the background or specify illegibly small font sizes.
  • Text or links too small to read -- see above.
  • Same color as background -- all text and links must be in a color that contrasts with the background color.
  • Going crazy with the meta tags -- be judicious in the number of key words you use in the meta tags. Keep the descriptions reasonably short.

TIPS

SEO needs to be done correctly to work, so make sure that you hire a professional to get it right.

 

SEO done wrong can result in no rank or being black listed.