Designing your site to maximize traffic
from the search engines is not a difficult task but
it does require you to think ahead and plan your SEO strategy
carefully. If you have not yet built your website and
are still in the initial planning stages then you may
have an easier time of it. If you already have an existing
website, then you may need to take the time to read
up on these SEO strategies and make some changes to
incorporate them into your website.
I will discuss 13 ways in which you can improve on your
existing website or boost a brand new website into
the stratosphere of high rankings. These are NOT SEO
tricks but rather tried, tested, ethical and true methods
that we know to work effectively. We all know that in
reality there are no real SEO tricks. True success is
achieved through hard work, research and implementation
of a thorough and complete SEO strategy.
Without further ado here is a checklist of important
items to consider and implement into your SEO strategy.
Using Javascript or Other Unspiderable Code
If you intend to use Javascript on your web page it
is best to use it sparingly or not at all. Search engine
spiders cannot read Javascript and it is possible that
along with ignoring it when they come across it on your
page, they may also get hung up on it if you are using
a lot of it. If you really need to use Javascript you
can safely use it by putting the code into a separate
JS file and calling it with a single line of code which
you place between your <head> and </head>
tags within your web page. The code used to include
your JS file looks like this:
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE='JavaScript' type='text/javascript'
src='replace-with-JavaScript-file-name.js'></SCRIPT>
Using Style Guidelines Effectively
If you are using CSS style commands, do not include
them within your actual web page source code. You don't
want search engine spiders to have to wade through 100
lines of unreadable code before they reach your actual
content. Instead, place your style guidelines into a
separate CSS file and call them with a single line of
code from within your <head> and </head>
tags by using the following code:
<link rel='stylesheet' href='replace-with-style-file-name.css'>
Primary Keyword Layout
Examine your website from a source code point of view
and ensure that your primary keywords or phrases will
be spidered first. When search engine spiders read your
page they read the source code just like we would read
a book from left to right - top to bottom. We know that
search engines place higher relevancy on keywords and
phrases which appear closer to the top of a page so
it stands to reason that if you've got a large table
full of graphics appearing at the top of your source
code before your primary keywords, then you can achieve
higher rankings by adjusting your layout and placing
a well written search engine optimized paragraph above
that table full of graphics.
Spiderable Text Present on Each Page
Many times I have seen some very pretty websites, but
their chances of ranking high for any relevant keywords
have been dashed by the use of only graphics and very
little or no text on the pages. It is very important
to your SEO strategy that you make sure that you've
taken the time to write some quality textual content
for your pages. Don't write nonsensical text filled
with blatant sp@m. Instead, take a few extra minutes
and write 4-5 quality paragraphs which clearly explain
the theme of your site and the particular page you’re
writing for.
Proper Use of robots.txt File
On several occasions I have performed an analysis of
a client's website only to discover that they had inadvertently
blocked spider access to their website by incorrectly
formatting their robots.txt file. It is critical that
you know what you're doing when you use a robots.txt
file. If you are unsure of the correct syntax when modifying
or creating a robots.txt file, I recommend you not use
a robots.txt file at all. This may sound counterproductive,
but it's better to be safe than sorry. Accidentally
blocking the spiders can result in a loss of all your
rankings. It would almost be like starting over again
to repair the damage. For help on correctly formatting
your robots.txt file, visit robotstxt.org.
Dead Links and 404 Errors
If you are not checking for broken links on your website, then you should start immediately and make this
a part of your SEO strategy. You can never be 100% sure
of your link integrity, especially when your site has
100, or more, pages. Aside from losing potential customers
into a vortex of 404 errors, you risk more than that
from a search engine perspective. When a search engine
spider visits your website and finds broken links,
the impression left is that your site is not regularly
maintained and updated. Not much is known about how
the engines view this, but your crawl status may be
assigned a low priority by visiting search engine spiders.
In other words, the spiders may not visit your site
as frequently as they visit sites with 100% link integrity.
So make sure you download some link checking software
and begin a regular schedule of verifying your link
structure.
Using Images For Primary Navigation Links
Many webmasters like to use fancy looking navigation
links but, in doing so, they fail to establish a theme
for their sites. For instance, using a graphical link
back to your home page does not tell the search engine
spiders what that link is about unless the spider actually
visits that page. If you use optimized ALT text on that
graphical home page link, then that would be a step
in the right direction. But to maximize the effect and
clearly define the theme of your website, you need
to use a text link that has your primary keyword or
phrase within the link text. This is called Link Reputation.
Home, Site Map and Contact Page Links
The Home, Site Map and Contact pages are your site's
primary pages and should be your SEO strategy top priority.
It is essential that these pages be spidered and exposed
to your site visitors. To ensure that they are spidered,
place links to them near the top of your source code
on every page of your website. Your home page is, of
course, the main entrance to your website so you want
that to be the focal point in the search engines. Your
site map page should (if properly optimized) have links
to all of your sub pages and use primary keywords belonging
to each sub page within the link text pointing to those
sub pages. Your contact page is just as important because
it's used by visitors who have questions or who wish
to order products and services.
Redirected Pages
When a web page has outlived its usefulness, webmasters
will, on occasion, redirect visitors hitting that page
to another page. Search engine spiders, however, take
a dim view of page redirects. If you change the content
of your site and find that you have no further use for
a page, do not place a redirect on that page. Instead,
remove the outdated content and replace it with something
relevant. Include a text link to your home page or to
a new replacement page. When you remove a page or place
a redirect on an outdated page, you're cheating yourself
out of better rankings and search engine traffic. Moreover,
using page redirects can result in the removal of your
site listing in search engine databases with a consequent
loss of revenue.
Excessively Small Type Font Sizes
Text in a font smaller than font size 2 is normally
reserved for copyright information and the legal jargon
often seen at the bottom of web pages. Use font size
2, or greater, for the majority of text on your page.
Font size is a major factor in SEO strategy because
the font size used defines the relevancy a search engine
spider assigns to the content it finds on your page.
An example of this would be the text within heading
tags (H1 through to H6). Text surrounded with H1 tags
has a higher relevancy placed on it than text surrounded
with H6 tags. Visit the w3.org website for a better
understanding of how on-page text is viewed by search
engine spiders with regard to importance and relevancy.
Search engine spiders tend to follow the W3 HTML standard.
Hidden Text, Door Way Pages and Other Tricks
Nowadays search engines are pretty smart and trying
to trick them is not a wise course of action. Take some
time to stop and examine your approach before proceeding
with your SEO strategy. The rule of thumb is that if
it looks like spam or could be perceived as spam by
the search engines, then it probably is spam. The last
thing you need is for a competitor to report unethical
SEO tactics to the search engines. Such tactics could
result in a loss of existing site listings as well as
a ban on future submissions. So, to ensure the longevity
of your online business, stay away from any technique
that looks unethical.
Using HTML Frames
In short, don't. Frames are not very search engine friendly
because search engines cannot read a framed source document
that tells your browser to load more than one page in
your browser window at the same time. Thus, achieving
a high PageRank on your home page is difficult. Frames
also make it hard for search engine spiders to find
all of your sub pages.
Non-Spider-Friendly URL's If the URL's
for your website contain characters such as &,
$, =, %, etc., that is they are dynamic in nature, then
search engine spiders may not be able to read them.
And, if they can't be read, then the search engine spiders
won't be able to follow them to index your pages. However,
there are solutions available to fix this problem. For
example, webmasters who have sites hosted on servers
with Unix operating systems can use Apache mod_rewrite
to rewrite URL's that contain a session ID, or other
nasty characters, into search engine spider friendly
URL's.
SEO, of course, is not just limited to the 13 areas
covered in this article, but if you apply the SEO strategies
outlined in these 13 areas to your website, you will
find that your site rankings and traffic improve dramatically.
About The Author: Brendon
Turner - He is a certified search engine optimization
specialist with 8 years experience as a Senior SEO Consultant.
Brendon also maintains ProfitGazette.com, a progressive
weekly edition of real-world online marketing business
tactics that work!
|
