Web Page Optimization Techniques
There are literally thousands of references you could opt to follow in searching for techniques on how to effectively optimize each page of your company’s website. Here I’ve listed and expounded upon some of the basic web page optimization principles that are commonly used to clean up a page and make it more search engine friendly.
Search engine optimization is less technical than one may think. You and I both know when we have reached a website that has not been given the proper care to ensure it looks and “feels” credible. Websites that contain countless banner ads flying in every which direction, are filled with irrelevant links, and just plain don’t look good, are all signs of a poorly optimized site. A general rule of thumb is that if it doesn’t look good to a person, it probably doesn’t look very good to a search engine either.
That said, it IS possible to have a decently constructed site that is professional, functional, and offers great content, but still suffers from poor rankings from the search engines. From here, there are a few initial edits/additions that can be made to ensure that when a search bot returns to your site, it finds something different and makes it want to take a second look.
1. Create Compelling and Informative Title Tags
Your title tag is what defines your page. It should be brief but informative. It should also contain a keyword or at least a derivative of a keyword that you are trying to rank for with that particular page. Most content management systems allow for easy editing of title and meta tags for individual pages of your website. If your site is not built on a user friendly cms or any cms for that matter, you can edit the title tag in the raw html file using ftp. Make sure that your title is no more than 60 characters long.
2. Use Meta Tags Honestly and Effectively
What I mean by honestly is that you should never stuff your meta tags with data that doesn’t have anything to do with your page. A product page showing a picture of a pair of snowboarding goggles and a brief paragraph describing that particular model should not have a keyword meta tag that contains 100 keywords ranging from “vans snowboarding shoes” to “popular skate videos.” Contrarily, the keywords meta tag should contain 7 to 10 keywords that are specific for that product such as “orange Spy snowboarding goggles,” and “fog proof ski goggles.”
Likewise, your description should be brief and page specific. It will be a little longer than the title but no more than 160 characters. It basically explains what the person will see if they look at the page. When a person reads your description tag, he/she should have a pretty good idea of what they will see if they click through to your page. It is often a good idea to leave them hanging a little though to create curiosity.
3. Take Advantage of H1/H2 tags
Headings break up content and help your page look less intimidating. A good web page will have four or five bold headings that segue into different topics of the page’s content. Google places heavy emphasis on what words are utilized in your headings so you can use this to your advantage when striving to optimize a page for a specific keyword. You can use those keywords in the H1 and H2 tags to ensure that Google and other search engines know that your page is centered around the topic of your keyword(s).
4. Make Good Use of Internal Text Links
Many overlook the importance of properly utilized internal text links to help a site rank higher for specific keywords. Though you don’t want to overload your pages with tons of text links as that will make it difficult for the reader with constant text color changes, these links help enhance the quality of your site. They offer sound navigation to other pages of your site. You should use descriptive text in your links. A link that says, “free bankruptcy consultation,” is better than a link that says, “click here,” because the viewer doesn’t have to read around the text to find out why they should click on it. Using these links can greatly increase your rankings for keywords that are utilized in the text for that link.
5. Don’t Neglect Your “Alt” Tags
There is debate as to the importance of “alt” tags for images, but the motto, “better safe than sorry,” is a good one to live by here. There would be no such thing as an “alt” tag if it wasn’t good for something right? There is such a thing as an “alt” tag so we might as well use them and use them correctly. They are there to describe in text what an image is displaying. Obviously, a search bot does not have eyes to see the image as it appears on a screen, it can read words though so every image on a page should have an alt tag that describes that image to the bot. If nothing else, it gives you a chance to beef up your page with a couple more instances of your keyword(s).
Don’t Stop Here
Of course these represent only a few of the very basic techniques you can use to make your web page more search engine friendly. There are countless ideas out there and I encourage you to actively pursue the learning and implementing of other ideas from well trusted SEO experts. It’s a constant battle, especially with Google, trying to stay on top of the game to ensure that you are not doing anything that will get your site flagged for spam. This is a good article from Aaron Wall on the topic of search spam techniques and how hundreds of engineers are constantly looking for ways to cut out spammers. An easy way to not get flagged as “spam” is simply to NOT SPAM! Sounds basic and it is. Build a clean quality website and don’t say you have something that you don’t and you’ll be fine
Coming Soon!
Look for additional techniques and tips in future posts. We will also be putting up a “tools” page soon with some links to free seo tools that will help you in your efforts to optimize your web site.
Cheers!
I personally think that as time goes on, the way of on-page and off-page SEO are going to change as we know it. I think we will see a transition towards client factors in determining SERP results. That included with increased personal SERP results and we’ll be seeing a huge molding of the searchers experience with Bing and the other SEs. Each search result won’t be made alike, just look at things like user interaction, bounce rate, bounce time, etc… Focus on a better website all around, and I think you’ll see better results in 2010.
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