|
 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 web
site and are still in the initial planning stages then you
may have an easier time of it. If you already have an
existing web site, then you may need to take the time to
read up on these SEO strategies and make some changes to
incorporate them into your web site.
I will discuss 13 ways in which you can improve on your
existing web site or boost a brand new web site 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 web site 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 web sites, 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 web site only to discover that they had
inadvertently blocked spider access to their web site 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 web site,
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 web site 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 web site, 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 web site. Your home page is, of
course, the main entrance to your web site 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 web site 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 web site,
you will find that your site rankings and traffic improve
dramatically.
|
