Having not done a new blog post for a while, (work commitments), I felt a bit guilty and made a resolution to write one today. So, I thought, to gently ease myself back into it I’d do one on SEO Tips & tricks.
CONTENT
This cannot be stressed enough. Good content is always going to get you rated higher in Google or any other search engine than underhand tricks or altering the meta tags. It should be relevant to the subject, contain about an 8% – 10% keyword density and ideally should be dynamic or updated regularly.
However, be warned that a page stuffed purely with keywords WILL be penalized by Google. Good content should flow naturally and be readable to humans.
URL
Fairly important, but often over looked, is the URL of your website or webpage. Any website domain name that contains searched for words or phrases is automatically given an edge in results. Obviously, this isn’t a magic bullet, it won’t guarantee you the top spot, but in the world of SEO every little helps.
Say you target keywords are ‘Norfolk Golf Club’, somehow you want to incorporate this phrase into your URL. Obviously it isn’t practical to rename your whole company, and the domain name is probably taken, so the next best thing is to change your page URL to your targeted keywords and put some well constructed and relevant content on it. If our domain name is www.golfXYZ.co.uk we can create an inner page at www.golfXYZ.co.uk/Norfolk-Golf-Club and use it as an about us page. The extra words in the URL will help give your website that extra edge.
Backlinks / Linkbuilding
Possibly the most important part of SEO after content, link building with other websites. Google rates Web Pages by the quality and number of incoming links, so the more you can get other sites to link to your site the higher up in search results you’ll come. Bear in mind though, that the quality of the source is also considered by Google, so for example web directories have hardly any weight behind them.
So how do I link build? Firstly, get involved with social media, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc can help provide you with good quality links. Be involved in an online community, post in someone else’s blog or be active on a forum. Start you own blog, write good quality articles and people will link to them. Lastly, the old favourite, simply ask. Approach websites and you think would be interested in link sharing with you and simply ask them.
Meta Tages
No where near as important as they used to be, in the 90′s Meta tags where the only way to get your site on top. When the internet was still in its infancy, all the major search engines used to rank website solely on meta tags. Unfortunately, keyword stuffing became common; to many shady websites repeating the same words over and over in a bid for the top spot. Fortunately, Google came along with their new way of ranking websites by its backlinks and severely curbed the importance of meta tags. Some say that Google doesn’t even bother to look at meta tags these days and others don’t even include them on their website. However, Google isn’t the be all and end all of the internet and other search engines defiantly do still rank meta tags, so what’s the harm.
To be done properly meta tags should be 10 – 12 carefully chosen key words that are common on your websites. Ideally, don’t bother to include you domain name. Google still uses the Meta Description as a brief synopsis of your website in the search results, so write it carefully, in the third person and keep it short!.
Alt Attribute
A rather simple on this, and something both professional and armature web developers regularly over look. When including an image on a website you have the option of adding an alt=”" attribute. This attribute is suppose to be a small line of text describing what the picture represents allowing screen readers and text based browsers to interpret the image.
So not only does it help keep your website accessible, it is also used by Google’s image search and helps with SE, no reason not to include it. Keep descriptions short, accurate and if possible include keywords.
Title & Heading tags
When writing content for your website or blog, ensure the correct use of title tags. h1 tags should contain your main site heading or slogan. h2 tags the main phrases or headings that stand out on your site and are important, h3 the lesser headings such as mid-article headings etc etc. Importantly, make sure they are nested correctly and in order. Don’t have an h3 outside a Div that contains an h2 tag, this will just confuse the search engine spiders.
Website Title
Think carefully about the Title for your site, do not just put your company name if it isn’t terribly descriptive of what you do. Returning to our fictional Norfolk golf club, which of these titles would be better for SEO?
- Royal Oaks Parkway
- Royal Oaks Parkway | Norfolk Golf Club
When titling each page, use the same practise, History | Norfolk Golf Club is much better than simply History.
File names
There is some debate about whether it is worth optimising filenames or not, but as I’ve previously stated, in the world of SEO every little bit helps. If you have files available for download from your site they will have much more chance of appearing in results if you name them something relevant like Royal Oaks Parkway – Calendar 2010 rather than simply Calendar. Also it helps the end user remember what the file it is they’ve downloaded.
Sitemap
Fairly simple one, but still important. Search engine robots have the ability to get horribly lost in a site, especially large complicated sites no matter how well it is coded. Submitting a simple sitemap to all the search engines ensures the robots have a complete overview of your site, all your pages will be index and they won’t get lost..
