5 Things To Do to Optimise Your Site for the Search Engines
Here are the 5 key quick and easy ways to improve your web site in the eyes of the search engines.
These techniques are what’s known as “On Page SEO” in other words making changes to your web site pages to as a means to optimising your web site for the search engines.
They are on page because it involves you making changes to the pages of your web site.
Lets get started.
Here are the topics covered:
- Title tag (Page Title)
- Meta tags
- Keywords in Headings
- Keywords in Page Content
- Image tags
Title Tag
The title tag is the most important search engine ranking factor of your page. When your page is displayed in the search engine results it is the title tag text that is used for the hyperlink. So use it to get people to take action and click the link to your page.
The Title tag is a piece of html code is what shows up in the caption bar of the web powser of people looking at your web page. For instance, at the time of writing this article, the title tag on our Web Promotion page looks like this:
And in the caption bar of the web powser it looks like this:
The top 3 tips to get the most from the title tag:
- Include an unique title tag for every page.
- Incorporate keywords into the title tag text that you want the page to be found in the search engines.
- The keyword(s) in the title tag should be the primary ones the page focuses on.
The title tag provides you an opportunity to further market what the page is about to both the person visiting the site as well as the search engines.
The search engines use the title tag as part of their indexing. Meaning it helps make your site more relevant according to the search engines when people are searching for the word or phrase contained in your title tag.
Common title tag mistakes and how to avoid them:
- No title tag included in the page. This is easily done when using html editor. When using Web Gurus a default title tag is added when your site is first created. So if one of your pages does not have a Page Title entered, then the default one is used, so it’s at least better then not having one.
- Not using keywords in the title tag. This requires thinking about what you want the page to focus on and build the content and title tag around the keyword.
Meta tags
There are a many meta tags that can be included in your web page. However, only one really has any affect on the search engines – the Description meta tag.
Description meta tag
The Description meta tag is often used by the search engines as the description of your page when it is displayed on the search engine results page (SERPs). Thus it is important to put something that is interesting and action inducing to hook people into wanting to visit your page.
And like the title tag, the description should be unique for every page within your web site.
Keywords meta tag
The other meta tag that has some minor influence on the search engines is the Keywords meta tag.
Most of the big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) do not use it, however, some of the smaller ones still use the Keywords meta tag. So although it may not help much, it also won’t hurt your page either.
Each keyword should be separated by a comma and keywords can be both single words as well as phrases.
Don’t repeat the same keyword, this is know in the industry as keyword stuffing, and is frowned upon by the search engines and can negatively impact your search engine ranking.
Keywords in Headings
Using the Headings on your page, primarily H1 headings and some extent H2 and H3, is a useful way to increase the ranking of a web page. This work best with Yahoo because of their bigger focus on "On Page" factors.
Don’t go overboard a stuff lots of keywords into the heading, they still have to be useful and beneficial to people visiting your web site.
Use your main keyword in your H1 heading, we recommend using only one H1 per page. Then use H2 headings for peaking up the content and including additional keywords. These H2 heading enable people to scan your page looking for the particular content they want and has the additional benefit of helping your search engine rankings.
Keywords in the Page Content
One of the keys to writing good content for the web is to use a natural conversational tone. Imagine you are sitting one on one with the person who is visiting your web site and you’re having a conversion – how would it sound. Now use that language, tone, and feel to converse with the reader of your web site.
Then to boost your search engine ranking you want to incorporate the keywords you are targeting into the page content.
Using formatting such as bold, italics, and bullet points help the search engine see what is important on your page and what to rank it for. Remember, don't go overboard, if your whole page is in bold it's like emphasising nothing.
In addition, this formatting also helps the reader scan your page for key info they want to read. Many visitors will scan a page first before choosing which parts to read, rather than start at the top and read all the way to the bottom of the page.
Image tags
The alt tag for images is another place where you can include keywords that the search engines will find and use to rank your web page.
The purpose of the alt tag is to help visually impaired people, or people with images turned off in their browser, discover what the images on your web site are about. So again they should be readable for these people.
The text is also visible to people browsing your site as a tool tip that is displayed when they hover their mouse over the image.
If the image is also a hyperlink it is extra important to include alt tag text as this becomes what is referred to as the anchor text and is important for search engine ranking. This is because the links pointing to a page and the text of the links are an important factor in determining the authority status of a web page and thus its position on the search engine results page.
Another technique that can be used if it fits with the images is to use your keywords to name your images.
Remember not to use alt tags for images that are not part of your content, such as bullets, or the images that make up the look and feel of your site.
Summary
Combined, all of the factors discussed here have a cumulative affect on your search engine rankings.
If you'd like help implementing the 5 keys to web site search engine optimisation on your web site then complete the form on this page with your contact details and how we can help and we’ll be in touch shortly.
Author: Steve Vale, Web Gurus.