Search engine optimisation (SEO) sounds very technical, but for the most part, it’s about making the purpose of your website pages as clear as possible to both visitors and search engines.
Search engines want to return the most relevant results for people. You need to tell search engines what each and every page on your website is about (the pages you want visitors to land on that is.) The way in which you optimise your website will differ according to the nature of your website.
This is a basic beginners guide to optimising your web pages:
Making your website crawlable
(If your website can’t crawled, a search engine will be left scratching its head, clueless as to what your pages are about!)
If a search engine cannot look through your pages and cannot follow your links, your pages won’t be indexed (won’t appear in search engine results).
Some kinds of Flash and Javascript code makes it difficult for your website to be crawled. If you’re using robots.txt on your pages, check that it’s only being used on the pages that you don’t want search engines to crawl (such as duplicate content.)
If you’re not sure about any of the above, a good place to go to check crawlability is to register with Google Webmaster Tools.
(You’ll need to add their code to your website before you can begin.) In your Webmaster Tools dashboard, you’ll see if there have been any crawl errors or pages restricted by robots.txt. You can then look under diagnostics for further information.
Good title tags
(A title tag is the most important description for your website – in just one line!) Title tags are the clickable links you see in search engine results. So, if you’re searching for women’s boots, you’ll see a page of results with titles you can click on.
When you click on one of the results, you’ll see the title tag again– above the page in the tab. The title tage tells a search engine what your pages are about. A mistake beginners often make is to place the same title tag for every page of their website, or to not place any title tag at all on their pages.In Google, the length of title tags is 65 characters. You can make a title tag that is longer or shorter– but a longer title tag will not be shown in full in the search results.
Good domain name
A domain name that accurately describes the nature and place of your business tells a search engine what your business is and where it is. For example, camdencarpentry.com.au states what and where. Of course, if you’re trying to brand a business, often a domain name that states the ‘what and where’ either doesn’t ‘have a ring to it’ or isn’t available. But keeping the name easy to spell and as short as possible will help when people go to type your domain name into a search engine or address bar.
Good URLS
Some websites, particularly ecommerce and some content management system sites may have URLs that neither search engines or web visitors can decipher. If possible, have clear URLs that describe each page. For example: chocolateheaven.com.au/dark-chocolate-bars.html
Use dashes between the words in your page URLs. They make it easier for web users to read, and also easier for search engines to parse.
Here’s a silly example of a URL with no separating dashes:
Candi is a photographer who uploads a web page full of photos of people on a windy day. She wants to name her page Candi’s gusting wind.
photowebsite/candisgustingwind.html
A web user or search engine could read this as:
‘Can disgusting wind’ — which sounds more like a web page offering a solution for flatulence!
Using dashes quickly solves this:
photowebsite/candis-gusting-wind.html
Special key words and phrases for your pages
(Yep, you get to select your own unique set of words and phrases that describe your website)
For each page of your website (that you want visitors to land on) — write down short phrases that describe each page. The phrases can be two, three, or four words in length– or longer. Now go back and craft these phrases so that they resemble the phrases that people would use when searching for your product or service. For example, if you sell women’s fashion accessories, you might be selling– handbags, scarves, belts and jewellery. For each of these, you can come up with a set of key phrases. that describe the products that you’re selling.
Good quality inbound links
Inbound links are links coming from other websites to yours. If a link comes from an established, respected website, this is like a vote for your website. It tells a search engine that your web page (or pages) has content that another website found valuable or interesting in some way. Such links are particularly good if they come from a web page that concerns the same subject as the web page of yours it is linking to. For example, a link coming from a page about children’s health going to a page about children’s health on another website might be held in higher regard by a search engine than if that same inbound link was coming from a page about lawnmowers.
Good quality outbound links
Outbound links are links going from your website to other websites. If you have links going to spammy, low-quality websites, this does not look good to a search engine. If you link to other sites, the links are best going to respected websites that will provide value to web visitors. Blogs will often have links in the comments area that go to spam websites. You can nofollow the links in your blog comments. If you nofollow a link, it means you are not giving a vote to the web page the link goes to.
Onsite links
Many people don’t realise they can also vote for their own pages by the way they link to pages within their website. Ensure that the most links on your site go to your most important pages.
Sitemap
A sitemap sets out your website structure clearly to a search engine. You can also specify your most important pages.
Love your blog and enjoyed reading a number of your posts.
In particular….thank you for this one on SEO, between SEO and Keywords I don’t know which I find more confusing…you info helped though..thank you.
Celebrate Life and Laugh At What You Cant Understand
Lorrette
Lorrette@DailyScrew-Ups´s last blog ..New Pandemic – ‘Wine Flu’…!
Hi Lorrette
Thank you
In a few weeks, I’m going to collate all my pages on SEO into a structured page of links– so that people can find what they want to know quickly.
(Without getting bogged down!)
Have to say, I loved your blog! It’s so funny!! Pure gold.
I tried to comment on one of your articles, but kept getting the ‘white wall of death’. My internet must be playing up today!
Will try again later on