| Search
Engine Optimization - the basics
Link structure within the site
An obvious, but sometimes overlooked,
aspect of search engine optimization is to make
sure that search engine spiders can actually find
(crawl) all of the site's pages. If they can't
find them, they sure as hell won't get spidered
and indexed, and no amount of search engine optimization
on them will help.
Some points to note
Spiders can't see links that are accomplished
by Javascript so, as far as search engines are
concerned, they don't exist. Don't use them if
you want spiders to follow your links.
Google won't spider any URL that looks like it
has a Session ID in it, so URLs with longish numbers
in them must be avoided. These are usually dynamic
URLs.
Make sure that all pages link to at least one
other page. Links to pages that don't link out
are called "dangling links", and the
reason to avoid them can be found here.
It is good to structure the internal links so
that targeted search terms are reinforced. E.g.
organize the links so that a topic's sub-topic
pages link to the topic page with the right link
text (see below), and vice-versa
.
Off-page elements
Link text
<a href="url">some link text</a>
This is one of the two most important elements
for good rankings. The link text can be on pages
within the site or on other sites' pages. Either
way, it is important. The target page's main search
term should be included in the link text. When
possible, don't use identical link text for every
link that links to a page, but do include the
target page's main search term in the link text.
Google attributes link text to the target page
- as actually being on the target page, and it
treats it's pseudo-presence as being an important
element of the target page. Links carry even more
weight if the text around them is concerned with
the target page's topic and search term(s).
On-page elements
The Title tag
<title>some title words</title>
This is second of the two most important elements
for good rankings. Make sure that the page's search
term is contained in this tag, and place it as
near to the front as is reasonable, whilst ensuring
that it reads well. There's nothing wrong with
placing the search term up front on its own, followed
by a period; e.g. "Pagerank. Google's PageRank
and how to make the most of it". The target
search term is, of course, "PageRank".
Obviously each page's Title tag should be different
to the Title tags on the site's other pages.
The Description tag
<meta name="description" content="a
nice description">
Some search engines, such as Google, don't display
the Description like they used to do but, even
so, it should still be included in each page for
those engines that do, and for the odd times when
even Google displays it. Write an appealing description
for the page and incorporate the page's search
term into it at least once and, preferably, twice.
Place one instance of it at the start or as near
to the start as is reasonably possible.
The Keywords tag
<meta name="keywords" content="some
keywords">
The words in the Keywords tag were never treated
as keywords by the search engines; they were treated
as text on the page. The tag isn't as effective
as it used to be but there is no reason to leave
it out. So put plenty of relevant keywords into
the tag and include the search term once at the
front, and a second time further along the line.
There is no need to seperate keywords and keyphrases
with commas, as is often done, since the engines
ignore commas.
The H tag
<Hn>some heading words</Hn>
"n" is a number from 1 to 6; the biggest
heading size being 1. H tags are given more weight
than ordinary text and, the bigger the H size,
the more weight it receives. So include the target
search term in H tags at least once on the page,
and two or three times if possible. Also, place
the first H tag as near to the top of the page
as possible.
Bold text
Bold text is given more weight than ordinary text
but not as much as H tags. As much as is reasonable,
enclose the search term in bold tags when it appears
on the page.
Text
Use the search term as often as you can on the
page whilst not detracting from the page's readability.
Make sure that you use the term once or twice
very early in the page's body text and as often
as possible throughout. Reword small parts, and
even add sentences, to make sure that the search
term is well represented in the text.
In all probability, each word in the search term
will be found on the page seperate from the search
term itself. This is good. In fact, if they are
not there on their own, add a few of them through
the page.
Alt text
<img src="url" alt="some alt
text which is displayed on mouseover">
Include the search term in the alt text of all
images on the page. Keep in mind that some systems
such as Braille readers and speach synthesisers
use the alt text, so you might want to make them
usable whilst including the search term.
Back
to Articles
|
